Kintsugi
by TurtleBiscuit
Summary: On ambition, obedience, and the cost of either one. (A Kirigakure-centric OC fic, ZabuzaOC)
1. Chapter 1

Hello everyone! A big welcome back to everyone who's here from my old account, and a warm welcome to any and all newcomers. This is a revamp of a fic I had started a very long time ago. So here it is, Breathe Again version 2.0

I feel like this title is more thematically appropriate now.

Oh my god it's been such a long time, I'm so nervous! The Doc Manager keeps eating my scene breaks. I think I've got it fixed but it's possible they'll start disappearing on my again like they did last time. It probably wants me to use the horizontal lines but I find those really jarring. Anyway!

Thank you all so much, and I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

She knows better than to ask, but has maybe been a little less than subtle about her interest in the little stall set up in the street. So, when her father offered to buy her one of the delicious-looking fish-shaped-cake-things she so coveted if she successfully beat her time swimming the distance between the pier and the nearest island, she had redoubled her efforts.

Now, exhausted and pigtails still dripping, the five year old stands on her tiptoes to peer over the edge of the cart as her father tosses a few coins to the street vendor and he in turn passes the treat into her hands. Even in the summer the Water Country can be cold, and little tendrils of steam rise with the mouth-watering scent.

It's too warm to eat right away, so she eyes it anxiously as they continue home, so much so that she doesn't notice the other child running towards her until he's already snatched it from her hands and darted away.

The girl pursues.

She's much faster than he had expected. She catches up to the thief, knocks his feet out from beneath him and she pounces. He's smaller than she is, thinner, clothes dirty and worn, and she can see now that they're about the same age. His eyes are dark, like his skin and like his hair, and he's staring at her, not scared, just surprised.

There's a sharp whistle from behind her and she turns her head, her father standing where she'd left him, face hard and unreadable but certainly not pleased. "That's enough. Get back here **_now_**."

She does as she's told, scrambling off the other child. He sits up enough to brush the gravel off of her prize, and crams it into his mouth while he has the chance. She doesn't understand why, but she doesn't mind terribly, anymore, if he has it and trots obediently back to her father's side.

"Can I," she looks up at him hopefully, taking his hand and hurrying to match his stride. "Can I get another one?"

Her father glances down at her.

"That taiyaki was a reward for progress in your training, and you let that street boy sneak up on you," he says. "What do you think?"

Thoughtfully, she digs a sharp little eye-tooth into her lip. "No?"

"No."

She knows better than to argue. Glancing over her shoulder, just for a moment before they're swallowed up by the crowd, she can catch the other child watching her intently.

"Come on," her father says, brushing her hand away, "time to go home."

**/**

He sees them again a month later.

She's easy to recognize (same dark pigtails, same pale eyes, same pale skin), and he recalls the man as well, tall and snowy-haired. The gash bisecting his neck, however, is new.

The girl sits beside his corpse on the damp cobblestones, picking shards of broken glass from his skin. From the imprint of the wire frames still visible in the ashy flesh, it's apparent that someone had smashed his eyeglasses into his face.

Off and on again, a light shower of rain had been falling over the city, so the two men fussing over the massive pile of damp wood in the square are getting impatient as the pyre refuses to light. There are other bodies laid out, waiting, but she ignores them. She doesn't seem to notice him, either, and just sits, vacantly, watching the body, awaiting instruction that will never come.

It's not until he's drifted close enough for his shadow to fall over her that she jumps. He can tell by the way she tenses that she recognizes him, ready for some form of retaliation, but he doesn't move and she returns to her pointless vigil.

She doesn't say anything and after a long silence he finally turns to leave.

"Please don't—!"

When he looks back again she's twisted to face him, one hand braced against the ground, the other clasped hastily over her mouth.

"I mean," she says between her fingers, voice small and uncertain, before hesitantly letting her hand rest in her lap. "Please don't go. I'm just— I'm not supposed to talk to other kids, ever, really, so..."

He takes another step closer, and she swivels around to sit facing him. "Why not?"

"I'm not sure," she admits, shrugging a little. "He just said not to; that it was really important, but…" her brow furrows slightly. "But I think he meant when I started at the academy soon… I don't think he meant you, so… So I guess it's okay. "

The boy raises his eyebrows skeptically. "You always do whatever people tell you, for no good reason?"

"I was going to be a ninja, like dad was," she answers, blinking at him. "That's what being a ninja means. You don't ask questions, you just do what the person in charge says."

"That's stupid," he says, puzzled and maybe a little annoyed when it doesn't elicit any real kind of reaction. "You going to go do that now?"

"I can't." She gestures to the two men at the other end of the street, who have finally just gotten the fire to catch. "I asked them already. They said they don't take new students until November, and I'd have to stay somewhere else until then."

"Do you have anywhere else to go?"

Her pigtails sway as she shakes her head. "Some adults broke our door down. They said they were…" she pauses, eyes screwed shut. "'Re-appropriating village assets,'" she recites, carefully picking through each syllable of the unfamiliar words, "and that I had to leave. They said I could find my father here, so I did. And now…" She lets out a deep breath, slowly, head canted thoughtfully to one side, "now I don't know what to do."

She rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand. They had started loading bodies onto the pyre and the damp air was filling with smoke and the acrid, familiar smell of burning hair and whatever material made up those reinforced jackets. They're always burning bodies here, so he's used to it, knows to keep from facing downwind. He also knows they'll be over here in a moment to chase her away from the body, and he approached her for a reason.

"I had a head start, but you caught up to me like it was nothing, then knocked me flat on my face," he starts carefully. He knew not to steal from the ones with those jackets, or the metal plates, but he'd never expected that kind of trouble from her. "You learned that from him, right?" She nods, glancing back towards her father, and apparently deciding to pass the pile of broken glass down, carefully, into one of his loosely clenched hands— there are still shards embedded deep into his blank, staring, eyes, but she hasn't dared tug on them. She continues to digs out the rest, if only to keep busy.

The girl is still well-fed and strong. He knows that won't last and he knows things that will keep her alive when her ribs start to show through her sides and the temperature drops. He knows where to hide from the cold, where to scavenge for food, but not how to keep people bigger, and stronger from taking them from him, and he's lasted this long but isn't sure how much longer. The gnawing of his empty stomach's become a persistent ache. There's a buzzing in his head and a new weakness in his limbs that's steadily worsening. "If you teach it to me, I'll show you some good places to sleep tonight," he offers, trying to sound casual but holding in a breath as he waits, loathing his own desperation.

"Yeah?" Slowly, she looks back at him and pushes herself to her feet. She looks uncertain but maybe almost smiles a little. "I would like that, I think."

When he offers his hand, she takes it, and with a final thoughtful glance at the dead ninja's corpse, follows him into the street.

**/**

He points out a few places as they pass them, little nooks and crannies and outcroppings that are out of the wind and rain. He's found dozens, he tells her, all over the village, because they aren't the only people living out there, and he can never be sure if any one of those places would be occupied, by someone bigger than he was, on any given night.

She watches, carefully, struggling to make note of their location and any landmarks nearby. She knows the way from her house to the nearest lake and she'd even been out of the village and deep into the woods once, but besides the limited routes she'd taken with her father, Kirigakure is strange to her. They're all old, moss-grown, stone buildings and apartments, dominated by what she knows to be the Mizukage's headquarters in the center of the city. It all looks the same to her, and quietly she says as much.

"It gets worse when the fog rolls in," her new companion tells her. "You get used to it."

Between the huge cylindrical towers are smaller houses, and shops, and green spaces and uneven rocky escarpments where nothing could be built. She asks him to find her somewhere soft and grassy, because he's impatient to start training and you can't learn to fight until you can fall properly. She remembers tackling him, and she remembers him going down like a sack of potatoes, exactly the way her father had warned her not to. They arrive in a little park he's found for her. It's really just an overgrown and forgotten corner of the village where someone had tied up some old tires and planks for swings, and the ground's wet and cold, but there's enough plush grass between the trees for her purposes. She spends the better part of the day pushing him over, and it's just when he begins to wonder out loud if she doesn't just enjoy shoving him that he starts to get it. By the time the sky dims and they call it a day, she's taught him how to break his fall without breaking his wrists. Cold, wet, and exhausted, he starts back towards the village streets, the other child trailing after him.

He squeezes himself into the tight recess into a store wall where the service door was located. He stops her when she moves to join him. "This is mine," he tells her, scowling. "I showed you tons of places. Go sleep somewhere else."

She doesn't retreat, just blinks at him. "It'll be warmer if we both stay here."

There's just enough room for her if he presses all the way against the wall, and he glares at her, considering his options, before reluctantly shuffling over.

She was lucky enough to have been wearing a sweater when the strange ninja had chased her from her home, and she unzips it, peels it off, curls close against his side, and drapes it over them for warmth. It's a bit damp, but it still keeps the heat in, more than either one of them would generate alone.

"I'm Kotone," she offers as an afterthought, head resting on his shoulder.

He glances over to find her watching him expectantly.

"Zabuza," he admits finally. "It's Momochi Zabuza."

**/**

He jumps when he wakes up and finds her curled against him, but slowly the previous day comes back to him and the boy relaxes in spite of the unfamiliar invasion of his space. Zabuza edges away from her and peels himself out from under the damp sweater. He's still chilled and aching from hours on the cold, hard pavement but he's warmer than he would usually be, and that makes pulling himself to his feet is easier than it has been for a long while. The movement had woken her, and the girl blinks, yawns, looks up at him, bleary-eyed.

"Morning," she says as she climbs stiffly to her feet. The air's damp and her sweater is dewy on the outside. The inside's a bit drier, so she deems it worth wearing and she shakes it off before pulling it back on.

And then she does something strange, laying her hands flat against the brick wall and pushing forward like she thinks she can move it. "I'm stretching," she explains when she catches him eyeing her skeptically. "Try it, you'll feel better."

She shows him several, and he hesitantly follows along, feeling ridiculous but it's hard to see more than a few feet in front of himself this morning, and it's not like anyone passing by pays attention to him anyway. They just look down, walk faster, suddenly become interested in the time.

He struggles with it, joints stiff and muscles tense, the movements causing an uncomfortable pull. The point, as she explains it, seems to be to **_almost_** hurt yourself now so you don't**_ really_** hurt yourself later. And besides, she tells him, that's a good feeling. He's not sure they're feeling the same thing, because she seems like she could probably tie herself into a knot if she wanted to.

"You'll get better," she promises. "I've been doing this for…" she pauses thoughtfully, "…as long as I can remember. Same with fighting."

He sighs, unclasps his fingers, lets his arms drop back to his sides. There's a familiar hollow ache in his stomach. "Come on, let's get something to eat. There are a few good places to steal things."

"Stealing is bad," she says quietly.

He raises an eyebrow at her.

"It's illegal. That means it's bad. You can't do things that are illegal."

"Well I," he tells her, narrowing his eyes and starting into the road, "plan on eating today. You stay here and starve if you want." He hears her take a few hesitant steps before jogging to catch up to him, and she falls into step, eyebrows still furrowed, gaze disapproving. "If you don't eat, you'll die, and there's no other way to get food. You want to live, right?" Kotone doesn't say anything. "You… you **_do _**want to live don't you?"

"I don't know."

"Well, do you want to die then?" he says a bit more sharply, watching as she contemplates this for a moment, pale eyes thoughtful.

"No," she replies finally.

"Then you want to live," Zabuza asserts, "because those are your only options. If you don't want to die, you want to live."

"I guess," she shrugs, and then she's staring at him as they walk. Just sort of studying him for far too long and he can just feel her taking in his scrawny frame and dirty hair. He's about to snap at her to say whatever it is she's going to when she does, unprompted. "So…" the girl starts, still watching him curiously, "do you want to live, then?"

"What kind of stupid question is that?" He looks at her incredulously. "Of **_course _**I do." And she's still waiting, like this warrants an explanation, like the will to survive isn't etched into the deepest parts of all living things, all people.

Well, he thinks, something constricting in his chest— not everyone.

"Living is hard," he concedes, risking a glance over at her still-unsettling gaze. "You have to fight, and claw, and use everything you have to take anything you can get. Some—" he looks back over at her, makes sure she hasn't heard the waver in his voice, steels himself, continues, "some people can't do that and those people die. I don't want to be one of those people." He stops, ducks into an alleyway because they've arrived in the market. It's still too early to be quite bustling, and he can't get a good look at any but the nearest stalls, but if he can't see them, then they can't see him and that can only help. "That's why it doesn't matter if it's illegal to steal," he tells her when she creeps into their hiding place behind him. "Living's more important than anyone's stupid rules. It's more important than anything."

She just shakes her head, slowly, her now-disordered pigtails swaying with the motion. "I don't think that's true. I mean, that isn't what…" She just shakes her head more resolutely. "I'm going to be a ninja. That means**_ I_** have to follow the rules no matter what."

"I don't care what you do," he tells her, scowling at the annoying creature still watching him placidly as he eyes the visible carts and stalls, waiting for one of the vendors to drop their guard. "Just don't come crying to me when your stomach starts to eat itself."

"I won't," she promises, almost cheerfully, as he dashes out into the fog after his prey.

To her credit, she doesn't. She's curled, knees drawn tight to her chest, back in the alleyway when he returns, sinking his teeth into the apple he'd just swiped off the latest cart. It's been a successful day for him, the other few small morsels he'd made off with already bolted down. He'd seen her scavenging, digging through waste bins and finding nothing.

She glances up and over as he takes another loud mouthful but doesn't say anything, even as her stomach rumbles pitifully. He sighs, glances down at the shiny red apple, rolling his eyes.

He doesn't care, he insists to himself, but she's no good to him dead or feeble. Besides, he's already shown her several good places to sleep and as she's uninterested in any advice he has on stealing, he's already given up most of his value. It was an uneven exchange and she's sure to notice. And when she realizes he's useless to her, she's bound to leave him, won't she? Sure, he can now fall over and frustrate himself bending like an idiot, but that isn't want he wants to know.

"Here," he drops his hand, offering it to her, nudges her with the unbitten side when she just stares at it. "Come on, take it. Before I change my mind."

She reaches up, uncertain, takes it from his hand like she's waiting for him to snatch it back. When he doesn't, Kotone thanks him quietly before taking a bite, sighing contentedly.

"You keep teaching me to fight and I'll keep you fed. How does that sound?" This is a very, very stupid deal to make because he's barely been able to feed himself but his belly's full and it's making him a bit too confident. He'll manage.

There's a little tug at the corners of her mouth, and he's starting to wonder if that isn't as much of a smile as she can manage. "And we can keep each other warm," she adds. "That's good for both of us." He plunks himself down beside her and waits. Slowly, taking controlled, measured bites and chewing as long as she can to make the apple last, she devours it core and all.

**/**

"When they take new students at the academy, you should come too," She tells him as she carefully adjusts his outstretched arm. He's led her back to the abandoned green space they'd been using the day before. He understands punching, of course, but she's trying to show him how to get the most out of it, how to do it **_right_**, the way her father had taught her. He's untrained, and his technique is sloppy, but he's watching her carefully and remembers every correction she makes and is altogether improving minute by minute. He'd do well at the academy… really well. "It's a place to sleep, and there's food…You'd be out of the cold. They'd be able to teach you way more of this than I can. And really," she continues, remembering everything she'd been taught about duty, and service, "it's an honour to be a ninja and protect the village. There's nothing better a person could do with their life."

He scowls at her, dropping his fighting stance to sit in the damp grass and she folds her legs under herself beside him. "I told you, I don't want to spend my life being bossed around. Who's giving the orders, anyway?"

"Let's see…" Kotone trails off, eyes turned upwards as she tries to recall the chain of command as she'd had it explained to her. "Academy students become genin when they graduate. It must be hard, because not many do," she counts that rank off on her fingers. "Genin eventually get promoted to chunin, but first they get assigned to teams for every mission, overseen by a jonin. Jonin are in charge of chunin, too. "

"Who tells jonin what to do?"

"Other jonin, I think. Some are still higher up than others… some answer directly to the Mizukage himself, but in a kind of a way everyone's orders come from the Mizukage, through other people, when you get right down to it."

"And who does he take orders from?"

"Oh!" she exclaims, thinking for a moment, but no, nothing comes to mind. "The Mizukage's in charge of everything. Nobody gives him orders." He lets out a, low, airy kind of a sound that was halfway to being a laugh.

"Maybe I'll be Mizukage, then."

She just looks at him, mouth quirked to one side, head inclined in thought because what he's saying makes absolutely no sense. "You can't be the Mizukage," Kotone replies, brow furrowed in confusion. "The **_Mizukage_** is the Mizukage."

He lets out another long, noisy breath, exasperated. "Anyone ever tell you you're like talking to a wall?"

"No," she shakes her head, not as offended as she thinks he'd like her to be. She doesn't have a word for it, but there's a strange lightness in her now, a sort of energy. Like something heavy's been lifted, and she wants it to continue. "You know," she says as she gets back to her feet, and encourages him to do the same so they can get back to work. "I've never really had anyone to talk to before, so I'm probably not very good at it. I like this, though."

They keep training together until nightfall.

"How long have you been out here?" she asks night as they curl into a sheltered place behind a shed for the evening.

"I don't know," he says. "What month is this?"

It's late August. He's been alone since March.

"Huh," he says, voice low, when she tells him. "I think I'm six now."

**/**

The next morning finds them in the park again, and she shows him how to block, how to knock her fist out of the way as she'd been doing yesterday. He's good and he learns quickly but he's dealing with months of cumulative fatigue and starvation and she inadvertently knocks the wind out of him with a solid blow to the chest. Kotone takes a step back and watches him uneasily as he struggles to breathe, deems it a good time for a break. He's weak now, but he wouldn't be if given the opportunity. She's quickly growing weaker herself.

"Those aren't worth anything, are they?" Zabuza asks when he catches her absently playing with one of her earrings.

Her father had let her get them a few months ago, made her promise she'd take care of them herself and she had, rubbing them with stinging alcohol and never getting an infection. An easy, beginner flesh wound to care for, he'd told her. The last time she'd taken them out she'd noticed the pale pink flaking off the stud where it attached to the post, revealing unnaturally bright glossy white underneath. "No," she tells him, and he sighs. "They're just plastic. My mom had a real pair like this though. I saw them once, and Dad said I could have them when I was older, but…"

There are shiny, deep-pink ribbons in her hair, though, over the elastics keeping her pigtails in place, and he's given her an idea. Later, she lurks by the vendor's carts in the market and is able to trade them to a much younger girl for her paper plate of takoyaki while her parents' backs are turned.

She tears back to where the other child is waiting, sets her prize down between them. He seems genuinely surprised when she offers, and it's her turn to coax him into taking his share.

Someone starts swearing loudly and there's a sweeping sound, a rush of air, as something on one of the carts bursts into flames momentarily. The flare dies as quickly as it's sprung up and the irked vendor quickly nudges whatever it was into the trash. Zabuza's off like a shot towards it and comes back a moment later, passing the scorched, too-hot thing back and forth between his hands.

He lets it fall from his hands as soon as he's close enough, and drops the blackened fish thing into now-empty paper carton.

"Here," he says quirking his mouth to the side and averting his eyes as he nudges it towards her. "I owe you one of these. I'm…" he shakes his head still very deliberately not looking at her. "I'm sorry I stole your thing."

She looks from him to the taiyaki and back again, reaching to tear it in half for them both. It burns, and the filling is steaming when she opens it, her pale palms pink, but she's used to pain and it isn't enough for her to really register. "I'm sorry I tackled you," she tells him, that lightness returning.

She watches his face carefully as he accepts his half of the food, doesn't seem to notice that she's lied to him because she isn't sorry at all.

She's very, very glad that she'd gone after him and can't imagine what would have happened to her if she hadn't.

She tries though, as she turns the tail-side of the fish shaped cake in her hand, nibbling the burnt bits away so she can eat the good parts all together.

She thinks of him, his drive, his visible desire to survive by any means necessary, to keep living if only because he's entitled to it. She can see it, and she can identify it, but can't recognize anything similar within herself. She doesn't want to die, doesn't want to be dead, but if she was there isn't really anything she could do about it so she's sure she wouldn't mind. She plans to go to the academy, of course, become a ninja, but she knows they won't miss her if she doesn't make it, won't even notice.

She's just… here, because she is, and because that's how it worked out, and while she's here she might as well stay and see if she can last long enough to get there.

She knows exactly where she would be if he wasn't here.

_Dead,_ she realizes quietly as she sinks her teeth into the warm filling she had never gotten the opportunity to taste. It's sweet potato. It's delicious.

_I would just be dead._

* * *

**Author's notes: **This and the next were originally just one chapter, but it was going on eight thousand words and I thought it would be best to split it up. I'm definitely writing Kotone very differently from the first story, but this is closer to what I think I was originally aiming for. As I developed her character, a lot of things about her didn't make much sense in light of how she was raised. So, I hope that those of you who read the original can still enjoy reading about her and I enjoy exploring the results and potential pitfalls of raising someone like this right from the get-go.

Similarly, since we're not really given any back story for bby!Zabuza save that **_one thing_ **that eventually goes down, I did have one in mind that came together over the course of the first fic, and that I'm using here. So, those, and a lot of my headcanons about Kirigakure that basically aren't founded in anything, are the assumptions I'm working with :)

Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.


	2. Chapter 2

Hello again everyone! So, this is part 2 of chapter 1, cut in half because the length was getting unmanageable. So thematically and content-wise it's still essentially one chapter. As always, a lot of this is made up of my own completely unsubstantiated headcanons, so I hope those work out in practice.

A big thank you to everyone reading, and I hope you enjoy it! Reviews make my day :)

* * *

It's getting colder.

Most of the trees in the area are conifers but there are a few broadleaf species dotting the village, white birch and aspen, and their foliage changes from green to yellows and oranges and deep reds and their limbs are beginning to look bare.

They can see their breath and night, and then all day.

A kind of dread settles into Zabuza's stomach when the first few fat, wet, snowflakes drift from the sky one morning. It's not a lot, just enough to dust open places in their training spot white, but it's a sign of things to come— a bad omen.

Their hiding places dwindle, as only a few are good enough to protect against snow and freezing rain, and they begin to return to the same place, a tight spot beneath the stairwell of an apartment complex, that a faulty lock on the side entrance lets them slip inside. Looking up, there's a considerable section of railing missing a few floors above, and the stairway has been cordoned off. There already seem to be few tenants, and so between the identical but functioning stairway on the other side of the building and the elevator they can hear droning through the walls, no one seems to come this way. It's a good spot and they're willing to defend it if they have to. Kotone's started nesting, keeping things there. She's got all the change she's found or been given by a sympathetic passer-by tucked safely away there, along with a pile of every discarded scrap of clothing or fabric she's been able to find, and anything else she's salvaged from the trash. All in all, it isn't much.

He notices that she's a lot thinner than she had been, slower. He's learned a lot from her over the last weeks, everything he could want to know about taijutsu. Probably more than he'd need. He can keep pace with her now, though that pace is in decline.

They have to move around, sometimes, widening their hunting grounds when the people in the market or on any given street start to expect him.

Zabuza and Kotone are wandering a far corner of the village the first time it starts to snow in earnest. The sky is dark and clouds are low-hanging as it begins, and though it would be safest to head back to familiar territory, he's never been this way before and there could be something advantageous here.

Like an entire block of abandoned houses.

He doesn't believe what he's seeing, stops dead in the street before dashing over to confirm it. They're walled-in, all old houses, traditional and elaborate under the years of neglect marring their surfaces. There are no signs of life anywhere he can see, all the windows dark if not boarded-up.

And then Kotone takes off running after him, grabs him by the wrist before he can approach any further. "You can't go in there," she says as she gasps to catch her breath. "I think that might be the Kaguya compound."

"It's totally empty," he furrows his brow indignantly, eyeing the massive waste of useable space. "Why isn't anyone living there?"

"My father said this place is haunted," she starts, backing away and trying to pull him with her. "A lot of people died here."

He wrenches his hand away, rubs at his wrist where she'd grabbed him. "I'm not afraid of ghosts," he snaps. "There's no such thing."

She shakes her head, tangled pigtails swinging wildly. She's been trying to keep them tidy, combing them out with her fingers, but her hair is dirty and stringy and tangled and they get worse every time she does them. "Even if there isn't that place isn't empty. Please," she reaches out, gestures for him to back away with her and reluctantly, he does. "My father also told me that some very, very dangerous people have kind of taken it over. There are these shinobi—they report directly to the Mizukage, get all the most dangerous missions—It's the highest honour there is, really, but I really, really wouldn't want to meet one right now." She doesn't seem scared, not as much as she maybe should be if what she's saying is true, but she's insistent and he holds his hands up in a placating gesture as he walks away from the compound.

She takes his hand as they start towards home, like she thinks he'll go back if she lets go of him. He isn't an idiot, but it's cold so he doesn't pull away again, eventually leaning against her.

The snow's started to pile up, wet and heavy, and their footsteps make sloppy crunching sounds as they go. This will probably stay, and then there'll be more, and more.

"What's a Kaguya," he asks after a long silence, rubbing a great cold glob of snow from his face. He listens, enthralled and horrified, as she explains the concept of a bloodline ability—powerful techniques that couldn't be taught, or learned… and they were gone.

"Why would anyone **_destroy_** something like that, if they had it?"

"They were powerful, and The Second suspected that they were plotting against him. That's something called treason, so he had them all executed."

"And there are none left anywhere?"

She shrugs a little. "I don't think so."

He's silent for a long time after that, just watching the snow fall more heavily and contemplating the Kaguya Clan with a kind of disbelief. There had been others, she tells him, killed by ninja, hunted even by normal villagers, until nothing remained but the Hoozuki family, granted special favour because the Second himself had been one.

What a waste.

"And you really believe in ghosts?" he asks her when the silence seems to have gone on a bit too long, watching the spectral plume of his breath disperse in front of him.

She nods, insists that her father believed in them so they must be real. "I mean, he went to visit mom a lot. Keep her sprit happy." She pauses for a long moment, jams her other hand into the pocket of her tattered jacket. "He never showed me where she was buried, so I don't know how I'm going to visit her. He always talked about her watching me, though, that I had to make her proud. I'll make them both proud, soon."

"Is your dad buried somewhere?"

"Oh, no," she says simply. "They don't do that sort of thing with shinobi. Funerals and graves are for people."

/ / / /

The wind picks up, whipping the wet snow and ice into their eyes, and faces. About halfway to their hideaway, they duck into the entrance of s shop to escape it, and it shields them from the storm well enough to wait out the worst of it.

A few alley cats seem to have had the same idea, and are curled tightly into themselves in the corners of the sheltered space. Zabuza's always found them to be a nuisance, unpleasant and just another competitor for scraps of food, but Kotone's always been interested in them. She crouches to stroke them and they purr, three of them approaching and offer their ears for scratches, rub themselves possessively against her knees. She reaches out to pat another, still coiled into a little orange ball. She jumps, jerks her arm back and away, as it lashes out without warning, just barely rakes its claws across the back of her hand.

"Fourth one's unlucky," she mumbles to herself, rubbing at the shallow white marks where it grazed her.

She's nearly crushed when the door flies open, and an irate shopkeeper brandishes a broom at the two homeless children. "Filthy little mutt," he hisses at them as he chases them back into the snow, and they run the rest of the way back as fast as their legs can carry them through the cold and the wet, ice crystals stinging as they whiz by.

In his haste to get out of the cold, he almost forgets to press his ear to the door before nudging it open to make sure no one's coming; but the coast is clear and they collapse inside, panting and shivering.

"Why does that keep happening," she says between heavy breaths, peeling her soaked sweater from her scrawny frame and laying it out, as best she can in the cramped little alcove, to dry. "People keep shouting that at us."

He's been trying to brush the snow from his dark hair before it all melts, stops, dark eyes fall on her then quickly look away. "Not us," he says as he pulls himself out of his soaked shirt, climbs into her thin pile of soft things. "It's me."

He's been trying to avoid sharing any more about himself than he has to, but she's watching him curiously, settles down beside him. He's grateful for the contact because cold as she is, she's still a heat source against him and he feels chilled right down to the bones he can see through his skin. Maybe he should take a break from training with her, too, because that run back took even more out of him than he'd have expected, and there's a deep ache in his joints and back when he moves, and even when he doesn't. "People are stupid, and weak. Afraid of anything unusual," he begins uneasily.

"You mean like the bloodline families—?"

"—or foreigners."

She furrows her brows at him again, perplexed. "But there **_are_** no foreigners here. Kirigakure has never needed any alliances with any other Hidden Villages, so we're technically at war with everybody all the time. Nobody ever comes to live here from anywhere else."

"Not in the village, no, but I used to live in a fishing village west of here," she perks up at the new information and he's sure to continue and cut her off before she asks him for details. "A lot of stuff from the continent ships in there. Sailors from all over would come in, so I've seen people from The Land of Lightning. People could always tell they were from away, because a lot of them have dark skin, like—" he holds up his hand as an example, is about to say 'like me' but that's not really true. Those sailors and fishermen from Kaminari no Kuni had a darker, richer, warmer, tone. There were fairer ones too, though, and those ones could pass unnoticed. "But they came and went, so people just kept their distance, ignored them, but nobody liked them being there." He wills himself to unclench his jaw. "My mother was half, I think. Nobody liked her, either." His complexion had been washed-out by Land of Water pallor, leaving him more grey than anything else, but enough for people to recognize it as foreign. When she'd died, no one had wanted anything to do with him. He remembers them lowering their eyes when they passed, ignoring him, if not looking down with outright contempt, or chasing him off.

He'd walked for days to reach the larger village, where he thought he might have a better chance, where there may be more for him.

He had neglected to return his outstretched hand to his side, has been contemplating it as he spoke, only notices this when Kotone takes it, twines her fingers through his.

She's learned a lot of fun words since she's been living on the street, from people who chase her away from their trash bins or who notice as Zabuza robs them, or the women in the more dingy parts of town who never seem to be dressed warmly enough. Those words are decisive, and forceful, and she likes them.

"That's fucked up," she says softly, and he almost laughs because it sounds wrong in her even, childish voice, but there's no law against it so he guesses that she doesn't care. She glances down at his hand, brushes her thumb against his skin. "For what it's worth, I think it's nice."

It isn't worth much, but he squeezes her hand a bit tighter.

Kotone's pale, dark haired, couldn't look more like she belonged here if she tried. Sometimes people on the street will take pity on her as they never have on him, give her a few coins, something to eat. He tells himself that he doesn't want their pity, but she always shares what she has, and he takes a grim satisfaction in having things that were definitely not meant for him. Maybe it's that, maybe it's because she's a girl. It probably helps that she's so pretty, even dirty and tattered. It's probably a bit of all three. It's all the more reason to stick around her, really, use these things to his advantage.

He supposes it must take a while, longer than it would take an observer to find her worthy of their help, to notice that there's something very wrong with her; that tangible kind of emptiness inside that he envies. She never seems afraid, or angry, but he's never really seen her happy, either. That tiny smile that he's not sure she notices herself might speak to a kind of contentment, but he can't be sure.

He is sure that she doesn't have to fight to keep her breath from shuddering when she talks about her father, the way he's fighting now.

"You saw my dad," she says curling up against him for the night. "What was your mom like?"

He lets out a slow breath, shrugs like he doesn't care, because maybe if he pretends hard enough it will be true. It's not like it will change anything, so why weigh himself down with sentimentality.

"She was sad all the time," is all he can think to tell her.

"About what?"

"I don't know. Everything. Me, probably… People said it was worse after she had me…." It's low, mostly to himself, really, but she's heard him, and she's just watching him now, arranges the dirty clothing and stained towels of their little nest around him more snugly when he starts to shiver. It doesn't help.

"What happened to her?"

He stays quiet for a long while, and she doesn't press the issue. Just stays silent and tries to sleep, but he can feel it hanging in the air between them. Fine, he thinks. He's told her this much.

"She didn't want to live," he says, trying to mimic the detachment that comes so naturally to her, ball up the weight on his heart and the lump in his throat, shove them way down, deep inside himself where they can never cause him trouble again.

He fails, and he's sure she hears a note of something in his voice because he does, but he'll learn. Maybe that takes time too, and he'll keep trying until it becomes second nature, until nothing can ever hurt him, until he never, ever has to fight back tears.

/ / / /

Zabuza is shivering violently when he wakes, Kotone beside him insistently nudging at his shoulder. Her voice is unclear, and it takes him far longer than it should to process the sound, his thoughts slow and hazy. It's when she lays the back of her hand against his forehead that he puts it together.

Finally he's able to crack an eye open and tries to push her away, but the movement sends a jolt of pain through his arm, down his spine. The chill and aches he'd written off the night before have worsened. He's cold and everything hurts, both in this deep, penetrating kind of a way that doesn't care how tightly he had bundled himself in their bedding, or how carefully he moves.

Still, he struggles to his feet, teeth chattering. He's fine, he tells her, hoping it comes out coherently. He'll be fine. They have a deal, a use for one another, and he knows what's bound to happen if he can't keep up his end of the bargain. His traitorous body refuses to comply with his mind's demands and sways as he's overcome with an intense wave of nausea.

The boy tries to bolt for a far corner of the room, where he can be sick without contaminating their already filthy nest, but a step is all he manages before the room tilts sideways and everything goes black.

When he becomes aware of his surroundings again, slowly, the same process of bringing a dim and confused world into focus, he's staring at the underside of the stairs. He's in bed, a just thin towel between the cold concrete floor and his back, the rest heaped on top of him carefully, but as he'd suspected Kotone is gone and a quick glance to the side tells him that so is the small pile of coins she's squirreled away.

_Fine_, he thinks, trying to quell the panic rising in him as he succumbs to fatigue, eyes fluttering shut. _Who needs her? _

When he drifts off, his dreams are frantic and nonsensical, of fear, and helplessness and blood pooling on a familiar bathroom floor.

/ / / /

Kotone jams her hands deep into the pockets of her sweater. It keeps them warm, but more importantly she can keep a tight grip on the precious cargo she's hidden there, all in all just over thirty ryo.

The girl is concerned that she's caught the boy's fever herself, because her brain doesn't seem to be working quite as quickly as it should. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest, and there's a restlessness that keeps her from staying still for any length of time as she wanders around the village streets, looking upwards in search of a sympathetic face. She tugs on sleeves, and approaches passers-by, but they ignore her, and she can feel her voice becoming more strained the longer she tries to get their attention.

"Excuse me—"

"—he's very sick and—"

"—please I need to buy some medicine for him, and—!"

She bites her lip, thinking. She doesn't want to be away for any longer than she has to, and this isn't working. There's a small pharmacy down the street, and she finds herself hastening towards it. Maybe she's wrong. Maybe she has enough.

The only useful thing under thirty ryo in the entire store is a box of cookies. She finds the aisle with all the promising bottles of pills, finally, triumphantly, spots one with "fever" on the label, but she'd need the amount of money she has many, many times over to buy it and her stomach sinks.

She glances up, and then down the aisle, sees no one. There's only one person working, and the small store has a few other shoppers but they're nowhere near her. She imagines her father, can practically see the disapproval in his face, but there's no one living watching her.

She shouldn't.

She really, really shouldn't.

But her father had taught her that fevers were dangerous, and Zabuza could die.

Living was more important than anything, right? Maybe not to her, but he wasn't going to be a ninja like she was. He was going to be a person who lived in the village instead of belonging to it, the kind of person she was supposed to be protecting, the kind of person who was whole, whose life had value.

She takes another quick look over both shoulders, then up in search of cameras, and sees no one. Carefully the girl reaches up, catches the edge of the bottle with her fingers and rolls it towards her until she can take hold of it and stuff it under her sweater.

She's borrowing this, she tells herself. One day, when she's a ninja, with missions and an income, she'll come back and pay for it.

But for now, she thinks resolutely, this will be her first mission. She'll be sneaky, and she'll succeed because she remembers what her father had taught her. The most important thing, more important than anything in the world, the **only **thing that matters, is to always, **_always_** accomplish the mission.

She wants to pull the next bottle in the row forward to hide the loss, but isn't tall enough. When she strains to reach it, she hears the pills clatter accusingly against the plastic. She takes a step, and her blood runs cold as they clatter again, just loudly enough to betray her.

The girl takes in a slow breath, lets it out just as slowly as she tries to move again, every muscle focused and deliberate. Ninja can move quietly, none more so than the shinobi of Kirigakure. It can be done. If she can just be careful enough…

She creeps forward, one step, then two, easing herself along so that nothing jostles, her breath caught in her throat.

Hands back in her pockets, one clutching her money the other disguising the lump in her jacket, she forces herself into a less suspicious pace, taking slow strides out of the aisle, pretending to just be browsing listlessly. She's convinced that if she leaves now, they'll know what she's done. She has a vague, **_audacious_**, idea of how to stave off suspicion though, and forces herself down the next row of shelves and then towards the cashier, ignoring the way her heart hammers in her chest.

"Just these please," she says to the man behind the counter as she nudged the box of cookies towards him and carefully counts her coins out on the table.

/ / / /

"Hey. Hey, wake up."

He groans, bleary eyed as he slowly becomes aware of the cold and the pain again. His heart is racing and he knows that the dream, quickly slipping away from his memory as he tries to recall it, wasn't pleasant.

She's kneeling beside him, pressing something, insistently, into his hands. It's another one of her little treasures; a mug she rescued from a dumpster, chipped and jagged around the rim but still able to hold water, and it's fine to drink from if you're careful of the sharp edges. She's left some snow in it to melt, he can tell, from both the freezing temperature of the ceramic against his skin, and the bits of slush still bobbing inside. It's that, and two small white capsules, and she's urging him to take both.

"Where did you get these?" his voice is weak but she hears him, and looks away. The guilty, scolded-puppy look in her eyes is answer enough, but that little not-smile pulls at her lips when he pops the pills into his mouth. His hands shake, and she helps him raise the mug to swallow them down.

The water's freezing and sends a jolt right through his already-chilled core, but his brain still isn't working quite like it should be so in the absence of coherent thought, he just follows her instructions, and drinks.

The world still has a feverish, dreamlike quality and it's only when the frigid water sinks into his belly and her hand is warm against his shoulder that he realizes she's real, and he blinks at her stupidly, wide eyed and stunned. "You're here."

"'Course I am,"Kotone says, blinking right back at him, voice tinged with worry. "I told you, didn't I? I said I'd be back as soon as I could. You groaned, kinda, so I thought you'd heard me, but…" She plunks down next to him, warm against his side, and shushes quietly when he complains that she'll catch his fever.

It's not long after that he feels the pain sink away, and suddenly his body can retain the heat trapped by their makeshift blankets. When he falls asleep again, it's dreamless and deep, interrupted only when she nudges him awake for more pills, keeping time as best she can from quick glances outside.

The next morning, Zabuza is well enough to stand but not yet strong enough to outrun anyone, and joins her as she digs through trashcans and scavenges public places for forgotten things.

She's told him all about her little exercise with the pill bottle, which he's got jammed into his pants pocket, and he's more than a bit intrigued by her stories of Kirigakure's ninja as silent predators creeping through the mist undetected. He's mindful of the bottle as he scouts for anything useful, and soon finds that with a little effort it's easy to keep them from rattling. After this long picking pockets and stealing from carts, he thinks, skulking and going unnoticed are second nature.

He calls her over when a torn open trash bag, shallow in the dumpster's strata, reveals several sweaters. They're stained and most are torn, the one he holds up for her is slashed open right along the side, but she digs into the pile.

"Oh!" she exclaims softly, turning one of the identical garments over in her hands. "I know this. Academy students wear them; they're standard-issue." Her face lights up as something comes to her. "Hey—if people are throwing out old uniforms, they must have graduated, right? That means that there'll be another class starting soon. It's almost that time, isn't it?" Content with their find, she lugs it home.

There's this sinking feeling in his chest when he thinks too hard about the uniforms; not anything he can really place. It's stupid to question a good thing, because they're soft and they're warm and Kotone dumps them into their pile and nests in them eagerly, inviting him to do the same. There's just this thought he can't shake as he prods at them, poking a finger through the massive tear through one of the shirts.

He curls up beside her, and tries to put it from his mind.

It's just that he knows what blood stains look like when they've dried, and they look an awful lot like this.

/ / / /

It's two days before he's well enough to stop taking the medicine. He keeps it though, always on him, the few remaining pills kept still by his careful movements. She listens for it, but hears nothing, the way her father had walked, and it had come to him so naturally.

Momochi Zabuza took to silence the way ducklings take to water.

He had taken to everything she'd shown him so quickly. He was clever, and driven, and though it took him a while, physically, to master the new things she'd demonstrated, he'd understood them almost completely the first time they were laid out for him to observe. He took her techniques apart and examined each aspect until it was his own, and until he could explain the purpose of the thing back to her better than she had grasped it herself.

Which is why, when one grey morning she spots a chunin loading children into a borrowed produce cart, she asks him one last time to come with her.

"Please?" she takes his hand so he can't pretend to ignore her. She bites her lip, thoughtfully, as she tries to pull together the right words. "Come on… You'd be so good at this," she insists, but there's something more than that, maybe, something urgent that she can't quite identify and she really, really thinks he should, but she's having a hard time articulating why. "I… I think I'd like it a lot if you'd come with me," she says finally. "I mean, we work well together, right? So we'd be really great ninja together too, I bet."

He looks at her, mouth drawn tight and eyes narrowed, and her stomach kind of jumps like it does when she finds something good, or when something she's practicing works out especially well. Maybe it's just because they're starving and ankle-deep in snow right now, but she can tell that he's actually considering it.

"Maybe…" he says hesitantly, in a way she thinks would be a yes if he wasn't quite so stubborn. "Or, maybe you should just stay here. We're doing alright." She can tell he knows he's lying when he says it, but she doesn't respond to that. Just shakes her head automatically.

"I have to go," she says simply, watching the words form little wisps of steam in the cold air. "It's what I'm for."

A frustrated kind of a sigh forms its own little cloud and he rolls his eyes. "Alright, alright, fine, just… I don't know. You go talk to him if you're so eager. I'll just… hang back here and see how it goes."

She assures him that she'll be right back and skips off to go talk to the ninja for them as he ducks into a nearby alleyway. He's always been reluctant to approach adults, tells her she's stupid for wandering up to people so recklessly, but she's not sure what there is to be afraid of. She's never been afraid of anything, really, so maybe she is dumb.

"Excuse me," she begins as politely as she can when she reaches him. He's talking into radio, glances down at her and his mouth twitches contemptuously but he doesn't chase her away. She takes a deep breath, introduces herself, explains her situation.

"Your dad, huh?" he raises an eyebrow. "Who?"

"His name was Ume Gyouten." She watches, surprised at how long it seems to take for him to recall that name, and finally he grabs her by the her upper arm and hauls her closer for a better look.

"Ume… yeah, I remember an Ume, I think. Didn't know he had kids— I guess you do look a bit like him." The man, sandy blond and dark eyed, returns to his hand held radio for a moment. "Yeah… make that twenty-three, I found one more. That's— augh, finally. Great." He shoves it back into a pocket of his flak jacket. "Alright then, last one. Come on—" She digs her heels in when he tries to drag her forward.

"No, no wait!" She exclaims. "There's somebody else, too, I've got a—" a what? She's never really thought about it before, and her mind is racing. "I've got a **_friend_**. He wants to come too."

The man's eyebrows drop into a scowl. "Listen, you little shit," he begins, tightening his grip on her arm. "You just filled my quota. We've got room for exactly two hundred kids. I've got ninety-one waiting at the academy, the other guys out in the smaller villages have eighty-five between them," he taps at the radio stowed in his pocket, "I had twenty two, and the Nezumis are dropping their own son off themselves. So you, you lucky little bitch, make exactly two hundred. So you're going to shut up, behave yourself, and come with me."

She pulls back when he tries to drag her towards the cart, twisting in his grasp to see the road behind her, searching desperately for her friend. Surely, if they meet him, they'll know he's worth bringing along, won't they?

She scans the snowy streets, one way, then another, as quickly as she can, but she can't see him. He's disappeared, so she takes a hasty breath to call for him. "Zabuza-kun—!"

She hadn't seen him raise his hand, but the chunin strikes her so hard that she sags in his grasp, his grip on her arm is the only thing keeping her upright. She's only vaguely aware of being dragged towards the cart and dumped in, other small children, some clean some as tattered and thin as she is, scurrying out of the way as she falls to the wooden floor.

She's not aware of any time having passed, but when she finally pushes herself up from the bed of the cart (still smelling strongly of cabbage) she realizes that they're already outside of the village. Kirigakure sits recessed in a little hollow surrounded by high cliffs and the cart is climbing the hill of the main road out of town that she's traveled the few times her father had taken her to the lake, but they'll soon be farther from home than she's ever been.

She wants to put the railing to her back but there's no space, so she sits in the middle of the cart, pulling her knees tight to her chest and watching the snowy trees creep by. Some of them are talking to one another, but she doesn't join and when another child does try to get her attention she just folds herself over, buries her face in her arms where they're draped over her knees.

She'd made a friend once, but he's gone now. Now it's time to do as her father had taught her.

She doesn't speak to them, doesn't learn their names, or their faces. She just keeps her eyes on the road, and pretends they don't exist.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Commentary wise, all I can really think to add is that I've always kind of considered Zabuza and Kakashi to be foils of one another (in terms of his role as the first major obstacle that gets thrown at team 7, there are definitely design elements that are shared, etc) so I think that's definitely influencing the assumptions I make about him. So, thank you to everyone reading! I hope you're enjoying the story so far. Finally, a big thank you to my friend Mina for beta'ing most of this for me!

(Could it be? Are my scene breaks actually staying the way I want them? Yessss. What do you mean they're thematically appropriate...)

See you guys next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

As the cart presses on, the trees slowly begin to thin out. The road is still through woodland, but she can see sky between the birches and pines where before there had been bare shrubs and darkness, and hours after nightfall, to once side, the forest disappears entirely.

Unfamiliar seabirds wheel overhead and the air becomes briny. Sure enough, when she sits up, there it is in the distance— the ocean, grey and unending. She's never seen it before, and apparently, neither have the other children gathering to that side of the cart. She stays where she is, shifting out of their way as they rush past her, and watches them chatter excitedly and point over the horizon.

They finally stop, just where the road curves around a cliff overhanging the sea. Brusquely, their chunin leader orders them all off the cart, hopping to the ground himself, and doesn't bother to wait for them as he sets off between the trees towards their destination. The children obey, a few having to be nudged awake after the long journey, and clamber to the snowy ground to trail after him.

It doesn't take long to reach the steep path sinking into the ground, and as they descend it becomes apparent that it's been carved right out of the cliff side, one half open, precariously, and exposed to the sea air. The less surefooted children cling to the solid side, some merely cautious of the ice slicked path and cold sea spray, but others are pressed against the rock frozen in terror, hands shaking and eyes either screwed shut or fixed on the path's edge and the drop below.

She recognizes it as fear, anyway, the trembling, the wide eyes and pale faces. She doesn't pay them much attention as she walks past.

The academy's heavy doors are propped open, the building itself built right into, and hollowed right out of, the cliff. It's cold inside, and dim, but she can make out the figures and hushed whispers of other children milling about an antechamber that splits off into darkened corridors that would lead farther underground. Most are boys, but the occasional aspiring-kunoichi is present, all her age or perhaps a bit older. Kotone hangs around the edge of the group, watching as another few new trainees filter into the room until they stop, and finally, with a heavy sigh, their exasperated chunin stalks back outside only to return, hauling the last petrified boys inside by the collars of their shirts, one gripped tightly each hand. The doors close slowly behind him with a heavy thud, and her eyes finally begin adjusting to the light.

At the far end of the room, an adult's voice orders them into a line. The room's too small for a real queue but they manage to form an organized cluster, shuffling slowly towards the far end of the room that becomes a better lineup as the crowd thins.

She's not sure how long they wait, but the other children are growing impatient. Their voices grow louder and plaintiff as they begin to move restlessly, but she stands as still as she can, quiet and still, until she's close enough to see what's going on at the end of the line.

There are a few adults seated behind a table. One by one, the children approach, stand there briefly, then are directed down one of the hallways.

The boy behind her has been whining for a long time now. She's tempted to turn around and tell him that a ninja can't act that way, but she doesn't. It isn't her place. She's to be as good and obedient as she can, and let the instructors correct any unwanted behaviour in herself, and in the others.

Finally she steps in front of the assembled shinobi. There are two men, and one woman, chunin by the looks of them, and they scrutinize her for a moment. Mouth quirked distastefully, the woman's eyes pass over her and she gestures for her to take the nearest hallway. "Find the line, and wait," she tells her, before calling loudly for the next student and Kotone proceeds down the hall.

It's dark, and narrow, the same craggy stone walls and smooth floor. Lined up along the edge of the corridor is another string of children, all in some state of disrepair, some even as dirty and tattered as she is, and she sits, rests against her knees. Every so often a man pops into the hall from a door at the head of the line and beckons another child. It takes her a moment to recognize him as a medic-nin.

She follows him into the room when it's her turn, the harsh fluorescent light sudden and piercing. She flinches, does her best to follow into another little room off the first larger one, after him while fighting her eyes back open. He disappears, and a woman in pink scrubs enters. She introduces herself, not unkindly (which is how Kotone recognizes her as a civilian nurse) and asks her to sit in a chair.

The nurse pulls on gloves and a paper mask before checking her over, handles her like she's something toxic. With a comb, she picks through the knotted hair closest to her scalp in search of any parasites she could pass on to other students. It takes a long time, and a lot of pulling, but the girl stays quiet, just lets the feeling wash over her and ebb away like she's been taught.

Having found nothing in her clothes or her hair, she calls the medic-nin back into the room.

He orders her out of her filthy clothes, so she undresses. Kotone bites her lip as her sweater hits the floor with a wet thump (if she'd known there were going to leave him there she should have let him keep it…). She's measured, then weighed. The doctor hums to himself as though displeased, and she's afraid she's done something wrong but he just orders her to sit on an odd little table covered in paper, so she sits still as he listens to her heart, her lungs, then she watches, unflinching, as he draws her blood into a little vial.

Soaked in seaspray her clothes have absorbed the cold from the stone floor, and she shivers when she pulls them back on. The medic-nin shoos her away with quick directions to the storerooms, the girls changing rooms, and finally the first-year students' dormitory.

She wanders away, repeating the pattern of lefts and rights to herself until she finds her destination and approaches the chunin dozing in his seat near a closed door marked 'storage' and a stack of cardboard boxes.

He starts when she approaches him, and nearly falls out of his seat. The man recovers quickly and fixes her with an unfriendly glare as he studies her for a moment. "Ehh… Probably a small," he mutters and drags himself towards the far end of the stack with a heavy sigh.

"I'm just here to deal with the yearly influx of fresh meat," he tells her accusingly as he shoves one of the boxes into her hands. "Extra medical staff, too. It's usually damn near empty. We've all got better things to be doing, you know."

"Thank you, sir," is all she says, politely, as she accepts the package of supplies and this seems to disappoint him. Oh. Had he been trying to upset her? Maybe she should act upset for him. But the moment's passed and she's been standing there for a bit too long so she excuses herself and starts back down the hallway clutching the box to her chest. It's light but she can hear fabric brushing against fabric as she moves. She grips it tighter.

Kotone doesn't open the box until she's reached the locker room and finds it to be empty. It's small, with no actual lockers to speak of, but there are a few benches spaced out along the walls and across the floor and she can see the showers around a corner to the back and bathroom stalls to the other side. Despite the complete solitude, she doesn't feel safe lifting the lid off of her supplies until she's tucked herself into a corner, taking one last cautious glance over her shoulder for would-be thieves.

Sitting on top of a pile of black cloth are a pair of black sandals. She reaches for them and stops suddenly at the sight of her own grubby hands. Reluctantly the girl decides to shower before she leaves filthy handprints on the new, _**clean**_, clothes that she still can't believe are really hers.

Though, they aren't, really. She belongs to the village, like the clothes belong to the village, and even if they've been allotted to her she doesn't own them anymore than the sandals own them. Still, these are the ones she's been given to take care of, so the tucks the box under a bench for safekeeping before shedding her waterlogged rags again and padding towards the showers.

There are a few showers protruding from the tiled wall, and she makes her way to the farthest one in some futile hope of keeping an eye on her things from around the corner. The pressure beats down on her back like a hailstorm but the water is almost warm and it's been such a long time since she's felt clean that she doesn't mind at all.

There are a few soap dispensers set into the wall and she sets to scrubbing the dirt from her skin, under her nails, and then carefully trying to separate her only elastic bands from the tangled disaster of her hair. Kotone had contemplated cutting it all off at the first opportunity but she remembers how it had kept her ears warm, and considers the constant maintenance it would take to keep it out of her eyes while too short to tie back. She grits her teeth and works her fingers into the mats, pulling and tugging, and the shampoo gives her more success than she's had in a long time, but it's not until long after the water's run cold and her teeth are chattering that her hair finally feels clean again.

Shivering, she wrings out her less-knotted hair and carefully examines the contents of the box. She carefully removes the sandals, and sets them down on the bench, examining and carefully placing each item in turn. She finds two identical black shirts, two identical pairs of dark grey pants with lots of pockets, several identical pairs of underwear, and one very familiar black sweater. There's also a single white towel and she hurriedly sets to drying her dripping hair. A few more items rattle around in the bottom of the box. Something she recognizes as a shuriken holster, a small black digital watch, two notebooks and two pens, a hairbrush and a toothbrush with a tube of toothpaste. There's a little typed note stuck at the bottom encouraging them to keep their bodies and teeth clean and in good health (in order to be as valuable as possible to the academy and the least possible drain on medical resources) as well as instructions for requisitioning of supplies (stressing that all requests must be approved by an instructor and that replacements will only be provided with good reason).

She dresses, carefully packs the rest away in the box, and dumps her old things in the garbage on the way out. They aren't standard-issue, so she couldn't keep them even if they weren't threadbare and full of holes, but still, maybe, she stares at them a little longer than absolutely necessary before letting them fall to the bottom of the bin.

"That was a good jacket," she muses, and before she realizes her mistake, she glances over her shoulder for the response of someone who isn't there.

/ / / /

Kotone finds the dormitory easily enough, both walls lined with bunk beds (fifty per wall, she'd imagine) and most have already been filled. She wanders, eyes passing over the other faces as quickly as she can manage, until she spots an unoccupied bottom bunk just a few beds from the far end of the room. There's already a box slipped underneath, and hers would fit beside it. First, though, she sets it down on the thin grey sheets and pulls out the pen, and a shirt. She'll mark the things she's wearing now the next time she changes. Something creaks above her just as she sets to work, and she looks up as a shadow falls across her bed.

It's a boy, hanging over the top bunk so he's looking at her upside down, and he's grinning brightly. There's healthy colour in his cheeks and the wavy chestnut curls (that seem like they'd be spilling over his face if he were righted) are glossy and neat. He looks well cared for, and strong.

"Hi!" he chirps. "I'm Nezumi Hatsuka, what's your name?"

Kotone ignores him, and ignores it when he leans even more dangerously over the edge to peer at the name she's writing on the shirt's tag.

"'Ume,' huh? Nice to meet you, Ume-chan."

"I don't want to talk to you," she tells him firmly, determined to keep her gaze on the far wall.

"Huh," he sounds hurt. "Was it something I said? I didn't make you angry or something did I? I don't think we've even met before."

"I don't want to talk to anyone."

"Ooooh," the boy sighs as if relieved, and then laughs to himself. "So your parents are ninja too, huh? Yeah, I got that. 'Focus on your training,' and 'you aren't here to make friends,' right?" He puts on a strange voice, and she gets the feeling that he's imitating one of his parents. She supposes it must be funnier if you know the person being mimicked, because he lets out another easy chuckle at his own joke. "See, what I figure, is we're all going to be working together one day, so why not start now? Don't you think so?"

She doesn't know what she thinks. It isn't her place to question the orders she's given, just to follow them, so she just grabs another shirt, then the pants, and keeps labelling things without looking up until she hears him sigh and pull himself back up onto his bunk.

When everything not currently on her person has been safely marked with her name, she returns everything but the hairbrush. It's better, but the brush still gets stuck almost instantly. There's a ripping sound as a few individual strands snap but she presses on, breathing deeply whenever a particularly tight tug sends a jolt through her. Her father has taught her all about pain— just little messages from her brain, to let her know something had happened. It wasn't real, just a fabrication of her own mind, and if her brain had made it then her brain could dismiss it, too. He'd given her lots of practice, and she was sure to need even more now. Receive the message, understand what it was trying to tell her, put it from her thoughts.

For an entire stroke, she feels the plastic bristles against her head, then down her neck, passing uninterrupted. Soon she can't find any knots at all, and falls back onto her pillow with a contented sigh.

She was clean, and warm, and her hair was finally tidy— she had clothes, and a _**bed**_. And, most importantly, she was doing what she was always meant for; what she had been born to do.

So why does she have that heavy, sick feeling she only gets when she's done something wrong? She's almost certain she's done everything she was supposed to… though engaging the Nezumi boy at all was a bit of a hiccup, and she should know better. Was that it?

The girl lets out another slow breath and wriggles under the sheets, shuts her eyes and tries to will herself to sleep. It isn't long before she feels herself drifting off.

Zabuza should be here.

It's dangerously close to an opinion, but she's too drowsy to scold herself. After all, it's an objective fact that he would be an excellent ninja, and it's her responsibility to want what's best for the village, so it's an alright thing to think, maybe, that he should be one. She snuggles deeper into her sheets, her pillow, and something inside her sinks. He'll be alright, though, won't he? He's clever, and sneaky, and he's been able to feed them both for so long it should be easy finding enough for himself, now, right? Besides, Zabuza was the kind of person who wanted things, and this is what he had wanted, so everything's the way it should be.

Take the feeling, and discard it.

But this isn't like pain. She understands pain, knows what it is, what it wants, where it comes from.

This is something different and she isn't sure what to do with it, so she just lets it sit there in the pit of her stomach and calls it 'nothing.'

/ / / /

The chunin from the day before charges into the room, and with a flick of a switch the fluorescent lights sputter to life. A massive groan rises from the lines of bunks as nearly two-hundred children roll into their pillows and shield their eyes. The few still dozing wake soon, as he charges down the aisle and barks orders. In the future, he warns them, it will be up to them to get up in time; if the kitchen closes before they've eaten they'll just have to go hungry.

There's a moment of panic when she wakes, but after the initial shock she takes in the bed, the sheets, the man thundering past, and Kotone remembers where she is, and what she's doing here, and why there's only empty space beside her.

Waking has always been a weakness of hers. It's the way in which she had most frequently disappointed her father, but it's hard to be disciplined when she's less than half awake and her brain isn't really working yet. On the street or in their little cramped hideaways she'd woken quickly if only because (cold, and exposed and vulnerable) she'd been unable to sleep this soundly, but her bed was warm and safe and she slowly pushes herself up, groggy, and rubs at her bleary eyes.

The chunin is ordering them all to follow him to the mess hall, arms crossed impatiently across his chest as he waits for his school of new students to gather by the door, and as she finally pulls on her sandals and trots to the line, she's glad to see that she's still among the first to do so. They gather behind her, some red-eyed and dazed and clearly been unable to sleep the night before, but soon they've all wandered over and he leads them down the hallway.

Someone from the middle of the school breaks away and drifts over towards her, and she has a pretty good idea who it is. Kotone resists the instinctual urge to flick her gaze over towards him, as she's sure he'd take that as a sign of encouragement. Even keeping her attention on the back of the chunin's thistle-coloured jacket, she can see him out of the corner of her eye, all sleep-tousled brown curls and a bouncing gait.

"Morning, Ume-chan."

The only sign that she's heard him is the sudden rigid set of her shoulders, and when she manages to remain unresponsive as he waves a hand in front of her face, Hatsuka finally gives up and falls back into the crowd. She can hear him chatting the whole way, to anyone and everyone that will acknowledge him, sharing names and stories and various reactions to their new lives.

The mess hall is a large, open space, with rows of long tables and benches. Just as they enter, there are a number of wheeled towers of racks, an identical tray slotted into each, and the far side of the room has already filled with slightly older children, each with one of those trays laid out in front of them. They pick at their food and some eye them slyly. Some smirk to one another as they assess the gaggle of bewildered first years, but most quickly lose interest and return to their breakfasts. The blond chunin stands by the door and shoos them in, ordering each to take a tray and fill out the tables closest to him.

She takes a tray, then takes a seat, and stares down at the meal. In front of her, like everyone else, is a pair of plastic chopsticks, a glass of water, a bowl of rice with raw egg, a bowl of miso soup, and a chunk of mackerel, all lukewarm. The portions of each are small, but all together it's more food than Kotone has seen in a long time.

It isn't spoiled, and the smell alone is enough to make her mouth water and her empty belly growl; but for some reason, just looking at it is enough to make her stomach churn.

"**Alright**!"

The chunin's voice reverberates off the walls, and a boy beside her, that had immediately begun to wolf down his food, is startled and sputters as he inhales a mouthful of rice. The chunin paces the room, up and down the length of the tables, taking stock of the children assembled before him.

"So, here's how this is going to work," he begins. His voice is still strong, and forceful, but he has their attention now, and projects rather than shouting. "You're going to get your asses down here every morning after six, and before seven. Seven AM, we lock those doors," he makes a sweeping gesture towards the entrance they'd used. "You've got until seven forty-five to eat, and then you get booted out of here. Your first class starts at eight, on the dot. You've all got watches, so you'd all better get your carcasses wherever it is you need to be, on time. So, shower, get dressed, take a piss, do whatever the hell you have to, but do it on your own damn time. At eight, you're ours."

"Your last class of the day will end at six PM. Kitchens open again at six, until seven forty five, and you get fed again. Same deal— _**except**_," he stops abruptly and whips something from his pocket. It's a small square of blue paper, and he holds it up for them to see. "_**THIS **_is a meal voucher. We feed you in the morning because we're just that nice, but if you want to get into this mess hall for dinner, you're going to need to earn it. You will be given one of these by your first class' teacher every morning. You will keep this on your person at _**all times**_. If you misbehave, if you speak out of turn, if you disrupt class, if you are _**late,**_ if you give an answer that is _**too stupid for words**_, if you ask a _**question **_that is too stupid for words, if your performance is unsatisfactory, or if you just plain piss off anybody wearing one of these," he jabs his thumb towards his forehead protector. "Guess what happens to your fucking chit? That's right, boys and girls, it gets ripped the fuck up."

Someone on the second year side of the room is snickering, but otherwise a deadly silence has passed over the children. She doesn't want to divert any of her attention from the chunin, but she can see in her peripheral vision that the boy beside her (still wheezing a little) has gone pale and wide-eyed.

"Every year, some little smartass thinks he can game the system by telling his teacher that his voucher's 'already been torn up'. You want to try lying to a fucking journeyman ninja, you go right ahead; see how that works out for you." He's stopped pacing now, and just lets his eyes rove over them, seemingly pleased by the terror palpable in the air. "If you do make a nuisance of yourself after having your voucher taken, we'll punish you even more severely. You'll notice that these chits have a date. They're only good the day you get them, we do check, so don't you dare try hoarding them until you feel like eating. While there is a date, there is _**no name**_ on your voucher, so…" a wicked grin pulls at his lips. "Hang on to them carefully. If you were to _**lose**_ it, anyone could just… take it."

"Two final notes. One: the third year students have their own wing of the building. Doors to the third year wing are clearly labeled as such. First and second year students are absolutely _**prohibited**_ from any such area. And last: from six PM onwards is free time. Eat, study, train, do whatever, but remember: nobody leaves the woods around the academy, and we lock the outside doors at ten PM. If you aren't back by then, you sleep outside. If you aren't waiting outside when we open them again in the morning…. We will hunt you down, and we will drag you back here. You belong to us, now. Try to run, and we will make your life _**so**_ much harder than it was already."

He gives them one last hard, disapproving look before throwing them a dismissive wave of his hand and stalking off. Kotone takes this as permission to eat, and hesitantly takes a mouthful of now-cold tamago-kake. She's full after a few bites of the rice, but there's so much food and it's fresh and clean and she can't bear to waste it, some base, instinctive part of her not quite believing she'll ever get an opportunity like this again. So she eats it all despite the way her stomach protests, tries to will away the feeling rising in her throat.

Kotone is sick into the nearest trashcan a few minutes later. She isn't the only one.

/ / / /

Four more chunin shove open the mess hall doors and loiter, clipboards in hand. She recognizes the three from the table when she'd first been admitted (the short kunoichi with bobbed red hair, a sturdy looking man with steely grey hair and eyes, and a much younger man in his late teens with short black hair and eyebrow rings), and the chunin who had given her the box of supplies, still looking drowsy and leaning heavily against the wall.

At seven forty-five the blond demands their attention again, and explains that they're to be split into five groups based on their first class of the day, and that those groups would then rotate between subjects. The red-haired woman steps forward and immediately begins to list names (for Class 1: Ninjutsu and Genjutsu) children scrambling to line up before her, many rushing back to grab their forgotten trays and shove them back onto the racks when she shoots them a pointed look and mutters something disparaging.

The younger man with the piercings seems less sure of himself, but studies his own roster and another forty children soon rush towards him. Class 2, he tells them, is "life skills."

Reluctantly the other man shoves a shock of teal hair from his eyes, and reads out the names for Class 3: Shinobi History and Theory.

Kotone shifts in her seat a little as the man with the grey eyes clears his throat. She'll do whatever they ask of her, and after all it's taijutsu, her favourite, but she would really, really, really rather not be—

"Class four: Ume Kotone—"

It's a silly thing to be worried about. So silly. And she tells herself this as she grabs her empty dishes and hastens to the front of the room to put them away and then get into the line. She's going to be a ninja now, and there's no place in her heart for anything as stupid as superstition because—

The next name he calls is Nezumi Hatsuka.

Oh.

Thirty seconds in class four, and already she's having bad luck.

/ / / /

Today, their instructor informs them, would be largely an orientation. Every morning at eight, class four was to meet at the training fields outside to warm up, then they were to proceed to the room set aside for them indoors, with mats, and bags and dummies to hit.

He doesn't bother to introduce himself, just leads them outside and orders them to the track, a wide ring cleared of snow and slush, and assigns laps until told to stop. He watches with a critical eye, carefully, taking stock of their ability. He doesn't seem particularly impressed.

Kotone, for a moment, heads the pack and takes off as fast as she can; but almost immediately, she's overtaken by Hatsuka, and other bigger, stronger children with sturdy bodies and food in their stomachs. She finds herself in the middle and has to dig for the strength to keep from drifting to the back. She's running on fumes, but is fueled by the creeping sense of failure clutching at her heart whenever another child pulls ahead.

The track is clear of snow and slush, but it's chilly and a strong wind passes effortlessly through the thin fabric of their clothes. "If you're cold," their teacher calls when a few children have bunched by the side of the path, huddle together, "run more." They look back at him timidly, one starting a halfhearted jog and the chunin takes a few menacing steps towards them. "I said _**move**_."

They run in earnest, meeting the tail end of the loosely gathered flock.

The cluster soon pulls apart though, more distance between them as some lose their pace and other gain their second wind. That cold feeling settles in the pit of her stomach more intensely Hatsuka pulls in front of her _**again**_, an entire lap ahead. She grits her teeth and forces her feet faster, because it's her body, controlled by her brain, and she can make it do whatever it has to.

The visible puffs of her breath become ragged and uneven as she presses on, matching the boy's pace, her breathing passing with a ragged, laboured shudder.

"Woah! Hey, hey, easy!" he says, glancing over. His voice is stable, and strong. This is nothing to him. She had been that fast once, hadn't she? She can't be sure, but she swears to herself that she will be again. That fast and then more. "It's actually Kotone, right? Kotone, that's… that's not a good sound. Let up a bit; you're going to hurt yourself."

She ignores him, drives herself onwards despite the burning in her lungs and the growing trembling in her gait. It's just as she falters that something seizes her by the shoulder, steadying her, and it's Hatsuka, seemingly undeterred by the fact that she's completely unresponsive. He's hard to understand over the pounding of her heart and a sound she realizes is her own gasping breath, but he's letting her know that the run's over, and sure enough, the children around her have stopped running and are making their way back towards the academy.

A deep ache has settled into her by the time she joins the other children to sit, cross-legged, on the padded floor of the training room, but she's at least caught her breath. The steely-eyed man stands before them, and it's all so wonderfully familiar. Their teacher explains taijutsu, how to make a fist properly, and when he lines them up and shoves each in turn, she's ready. It's forceful, and her limbs feel leaded, but breaking a fall properly is such second-nature now that she catches herself, just as he'd shown them, just as her father had shown her, on reflex alone.

He nods approvingly.

Kotone's heart feels lighter.

/ / / /

Class five is weapons, and they follow after the blond chunin like a line of ducklings when he comes to retrieve them. Like taijutsu, weapons training will be done both inside and out, and it's as he's leading them to the targets set up outside that it happens.

Up the narrow trail from the academy to the surface, an abrupt, startled cry cuts over the sound of crashing waves and Kotone turns just in time to see a boy tumble over the edge.

He'd slipped on a patch of ice, sliding backwards down the steep incline, windmilling his arms in a frantic attempt to stop his downwards momentum, and then he was gone.

There's a moment of stunned silence, and then the girl that had been standing closest to him starts screaming, eyes wild and desperate as she creeps as close to the drop as she can to peer down, calling after him again and again. Kotone watches her, curiously, as the shrieking devolves into hiccupping sobs and the only other girl in their class rushes forward to rest her hand on the other's shoulder, her own face drained of colour and set in wide-eyed terror.

"M…maybe he's alright…." she tells the first girl, voice hollow and stunned.

"I don't see him!" The first one is still hyperventilating. She's small, brown haired and green eyed, her friend taller, and rounder, and blonde. Kotone tries not to take in any more information than she needs too, tries not to see them, just observe. Over the course of the previous class she had begun to recognize her classmates. Not as friends or people, without any sentiment or thought, but passively, as one recalls anything they see often enough.

She doesn't hear the weapons instructor trudge back down the path, but he appears behind her, arms crossed irritably across his flak jacket, and cuffs the crying girl across the back of the head with enough force to throw her into her friend, and both tumble to the ground.

He leans away and glances down over the cliff side with a dispassionate raise of his eyebrow, searches for a moment, and then turns back to them. "Everyone watch your step. And _**you**_," he rounds on the two girls again, narrowing his eyes at the smaller of them. "Are you quite done?"

Her response is a tiny nod, but her face is red and she's fighting to keep it from pulling back into a grimace. It does anyway, her next breath coming out as a squeak, and under his wrathful gaze, she can't help but burst into tears again.

He makes a show of tearing her meal voucher into tiny pieces and letting them drift to the frigid water below.

The blond chunin introduces them to shuriken and kunai (both curved and straight) when they reach the training field. He shows them how to hold them, how to care for them, how to store them safely in the kunai holsters many of them hadn't known to wear that morning, and Kotone absorbs it all with rapt attention. She can't help but notice the other children, though, and the few she recognizes as being nearest to the accident still look dazed. Many are oblivious, but she can tell the ones who've heard what's happened second-hand, as they look uneasy and keep glancing back at the witnesses.

The green-eyed girl is pale, and shaking, her eyes distant as she mechanically follows the motions of drawing her weapon, readying it as he'd shown them, then holstering it. The other girl is still close by her side, drawn together by fear. She rests a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, or gently nudging the other back to the present when she retreats inside herself, eyes vacant.

Kotone's eyes keep falling on the two of them in passing, like she can will them apart with her mind before their teacher steps in to do it himself; however, as the class progresses, it never happens.

He's definitely noticed them, noted their behaviour, but says nothing.

She returns to seeing how many shuriken she can stack, properly so they can be easily accessed and don't catch on the fabric, into the holster and repeats her father's instructions in her mind like a mantra: it isn't any of her business; the other children are not her concern, do not exist.

She ignores them when the red-haired kunoichi appears to lead them farther from the academy and down to a training field curving around the edge of a pond. This, she tells them, is where they'll learn real ninjutsu. For today, they're herded back inside and to another training room much like the other.

They're ordered to sit as she explains, as simply as she can, what ninjutsu and genjutsu entail, seemingly unperturbed when half the class seems completely baffled. The rest of the class is spent sitting, completely still, as they're meant to find their chakra inside of themselves. Not the energy they use to run, or move, the kunoichi insists, but something separate, something malleable and fluid, a reservoir of energy that most of them had yet to tap.

She'd only begun to work on molding chakra when her father had died. She understood the concept, but Kotone had never been sure that she'd ever really found it— there was so much inside of her, she'd had difficulty sorting out what might be chakra and what was just meaningless white noise. He'd shown her the transformation technique only the day before he left for _**that,**_ final, mission, and though she thought she may have felt a flicker of something, she'd never managed to do it.

Kotone tries to level her breathing, still herself inside as well as out, but it's a long time to be sitting still for many of her untrained classmates and she can hear them shifting. She's sure she could shut them out if only she found something to focus on, but she's no closer to finding it at the end of the class than she had been months before, maybe even further.

There's a dull thud as someone at the back of the room jumps, and a scrape as he sprawls backwards against the mats. When she opens her eyes, their instructor is smirking, and following her gaze she finds Hatsuka blinking at the kunoichi in alarm.

"I just molded a great deal of chakra at once," the woman explains, seemingly amused, to the assembled students. "It seems we have a sensor type in our class. Your family must be pleased?"

"Yeah, kinda," the boy shrugs, a little sheepish grin pulling at his mouth.

Their next teacher fetches them just as the others had, and they stream back to the dormitories to retrieve their notebooks and pens before being shown to the life-skills classroom. He catches up to her again in the hallway, seemingly used to her indifference because he just starts talking at her, bold as anything, whether she acknowledges his presence or not.

"Hey, so," he starts cautiously. "You were nowhere near it, but you've definitely got some. Not a whole lot, really, so I think you'll have an easier time of it when you get your— you're the one that barfed this morning, right?— once you get your strength up and there's more to feel out—"

She picks up her pace, hoping to lose him in the crowd of children moving through the hallway, but he grabs her arm again and she stops dead. "Hey, I just… you look lonely, ok? Let's be friends." Slowly, she turns towards the boy, and says nothing— just looks through him, pale eyes empty and cold, until slowly he releases his grip on her and reluctantly sinks back into the stream of bodies.

He's left, but she still feels as though something's wrong. There's a familiar instant where she thinks she may call out to him, but this time she bites it back and it dies in her throat. The girl clutches her books tighter to her chest, and reassures herself that she'd done what she was supposed to do.

Life skills is exercises in reading and writing that day, and history is a brief overview of the Five Great Nations and the neutral countries between them that are of particular importance to Kirigakure. Its all familiar to her but it's the first some of her classmates have seen of either.

When they're released for the evening she delivers her notes back to her room and then proceeds to the mess hall again. Her stomach's gnawing on itself, but she's going to be more careful this time, eat only as much as she can handle.

A fight's broken out in the hallway, two boys grappling untidily on the floor, presumably over the blue scrap of paper that's fallen to the ground before them. The sleepy-looking chunin just raises an eyebrow in passing and steps around them on his way to dinner, and they continue trying to maim each other uninterrupted. They're so invested in their spat that they don't even notice when someone smaller, and quicker darts by and the chit disappears.

She never actually sees what he does with it, but Nezumi Hatsuka is seated with _**both**_ of the other girls in their class that evening.

/ / / /

She's among the few that venture outside that night.

The woods are sparse by the school but grow larger and closer as she presses on, keeping a careful eye on her watch. She wants to find someplace quiet to train and study, somewhere she won't be disturbed or found, but not outside their allowed range or such that she might be late getting back at night.

She wanders as far as the ground will allow her, falling away into a steep drop straight into the ocean below. She seems to have found the place where the cliff cuts around the forest, and far below down the coast she thinks she can see the lights of the prohibited fishing village. She follows the edge of the forest until she can get a better look at the little gathering of buildings (some with lit windows and a plume of smoke rising from the chimney), and docks with small fishing boats bobbing in the waves. It's close enough to be interesting to look at, but far enough that she's confident that she's still well within the rules.

There's a decent clearing here, and she studies it as she sits herself on an overturned log laid out flat like a bench. She soon spots a battered target pinned to a birch, and her suspicions that this had been someone else's place before are confirmed. It's isolated, and more than enough room to train, with easy access to water whenever she gets to learning suiton techniques, and the sheer drop into the unforgiving, rocky, surf doesn't scare her at all.

She closes her eyes and takes in the sound of the place, the stillness except the crashing of waves and cries of diving birds. She feels the same kind of stillness settle into her as she'd once felt tucked away beneath a stairwell, secure and at ease.

It's perfect, and for the next few years it will be hers.

When she settles into her bunk for the night, brushing through her clean, damp hair as she had the day before, someone's sobbing towards the front of the room. As she drifts off she realizes that there are quite a few children crying into their pillows, some trying to hide it, others weeping shamelessly.

She knows what it is, of course, what it looks like, but she doesn't really understand it anymore than she understands what makes people smile without having to think about it, or double over laughing.

She knows babies cry, but her father had explained it to her: that babies are helpless and cry as a way to garner attention and sympathy and care, and that as a person learns to speak and take care of themselves there's no longer any need.

She's grown out of it and can't remember anything different.

Her father had been careful not to let her near any distractions, but still they found ways to intrude into her training. She'd caught sight of a doll in a shop window once, and once she'd watched inquisitively as two children chase one another down the street, shrieking but in a way they seemed to enjoy. Her father had pulled her away firmly on both occasions, for the same reason.

She was going to be a shinobi; these things were not meant for her.

/ / / /

The teachers don't bother introducing themselves, she realizes, because they stay only two weeks at a time. They never ask questions, or really offer feedback. They just stick to the lessons as they've been plotted out, so there's no room for confusion when they switch off for a completely new staff twice a month.

December has never been her favourite time of year, and she finds that if she works hard enough, and buries herself in her studies and her training in her little clearing by the sea, and never leaves herself any room for other thoughts, she can almost ignore her sixth birthday's approach. She's close, but their new life-skills teacher, who's moved on to more complicated writing and basic mathematics, had decided that December thirteenth, of all days, was a good day to address the clock and calendar as a subject of study.

Birthdays seem to be something her classmates find entertaining. They announce them proudly, clap each other on the back and tear sheets out of their notebooks for makeshift cards, but her mother had died bringing her into the world and Kotone sees nothing in that worth celebrating.

Slowly, she's able to keep food down and it isn't long after that she can feel her strength returning to her. Taijutsu is still her strongest subject, followed by weapons and she always performs satisfactorily in tests in her two classroom subjects. Ninjutsu, however, continues to elude her. She understands theory, she's learned the handseals and can switch through them at an acceptable speed for a beginner, but nothing ever comes of it. She's hardly the only one in her class that has yet to successfully access their chakra system but still she braces herself whenever an instructor's attention passes to her. Kotone readies and apology and her meal chit, but it seems that as long as she doesn't cause trouble she won't be punished and that they aren't particularly concerned with her success one way or another.

Hatsuka never attempted to interact with her after that first day, she's relieved to find. Upon closer observation of her year she notes a few others that keep to themselves as she does, children of ninja who've been given the same proprieties as she has. She tries to sit with them whenever she can, as they always ignore her just as she ignores them and it's a comfortable kind of mutual insignificance.

Every so often there's another empty bunk in their dormitory. She knows one boy stayed out too late and froze to death overnight, and heard something about an accident with a badly handled kunai, but it's becoming more commonplace and there's no longer any panic or grieving when another of their number disappears. The loss of young lives, and the hardship of their training has bonded some of them and she sees the same sets of people clinging to one another in the hallway and the mess and in class, together as consistently as she is alone. Always, they're just noted and ignored by the supervising instructors. She watches them sometimes, just taking in their behaviour. Sometimes when she's alone she tries to emulate it, but she's sure it looks forced and unnatural.

The snow's been packed down tight by her footsteps across her clearing, day after day, making a ring hard packed surface amid the wet slush settled over everything. By the beginning of January the sun sets in the afternoon and it's always completely dark by the time she can reach her safe haven and practice alone.

This time the girl's focusing on the target left by her predecessor. They're finally being trusted with their own few shuriken and a single kunai, and it's the knife she practices throwing over, and over, retrieving it and then moving back further before throwing again. It's heavy, and uneven and it takes practice to send it straight without it whipping end over end in midair.

A sound catches her attention just as the weapon leaves her hand and it strikes deep into the wood above the target as she forgets it in her haste to turn. No one has ever bothered her here before, and though it was slight, she had definitely heard the sound of footfalls on icy snow.

She can make out the silhouette of another child against the lights from the village, a boy she thinks, and she narrows her eyes, squares her shoulders and turns away determined not to make the same mistake now that she had with Hatsuka, and never respond to his presence at all. Eventually he'd move on, and if he tried to take her training spot from her she simply wouldn't leave. The other child doesn't budge and neither does she.

"Well," he says after a long silence, "if that's how you're going to be, never mind."

The girl's eyes snap open and her shoulders drop at the sound of his voice. Slowly, cautiously, she turns and creeps closer until she can make out his face in the darkness.

He doesn't look the way she remembers. He's still scrawny and angular, but without the sickly hollow cheeks or the unnaturally sharp outline of his collarbones. She can't see much of him at all really, and though the clothes are simple and worn, they look clean and warm. His hair's shorter, uneven now in different ways, since it's not matted hair sticking out as it is rough short patches where it looks like he'd hacked the unsalvageable bits away with a knife. His eyes are the same, though, sharp and clear and intent.

Before she knows what she's doing, she rushes forward and throws her arms around his shoulders, pulls him in tight. It's something she's seen other children do, especially the inseparable girls in her class, as a way of greeting and this seems to be the right context. She knows what a genjutsu is, knows that when something completely impossible happens it should be her first instinct. But how could anyone know to throw this at her, and if they did, if they'd pulled him from her memories, wouldn't he look the way she'd seen him last?

The boy's posture has gone completely rigid as he freezes, stock-still in her grasp, but despite the tension, he doesn't push her away.

Kotone pulls back, though she maybe forgets to let go completely as her hands stay on his shoulders. "Zabuza," she breathes, quietly, as soon as she finds her voice again. "You're _**here**_."

* * *

**Author's Notes: A big thank you to everyone who's reading and reviewing this. It means so much to me, and I hope you're all enjoying it so far. See you all next time! **


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Momochi Zabuza had absolutely no intention of going anywhere with that jackass or his cart.

He's not sure if he's getting better at reading the little flickers across her face, or if he's just been staring at nothing so long that he's beginning to infer tiny expressions where there is none, but when he considers her offer, he swears he sees something in Kotone's eyes light up. She bounds over to the strange man, and that's when he makes his getaway.

He presses himself flat against the grimy brick of the alley, and waits for the cart to roll away.

He furrows his brow at the guilt bubbling in his gut at the thought of her hopeful expression, and tries to smother it before it coaxes him out of hiding. After all, she's abandoning **_him_**, if anything. He'd offered to let her stay, but she'd chosen The Academy instead. Like she should, really— after all, it's warmth and food and a future. She herself had tried to tempt him along with those things, but he isn't about to resign himself to being **_owned_**, not for a bed, or a meal, or anything. It was selfish to expect her to turn that down for a life of scrounging and freedom with him, but he's never claimed to be altruistic.

Deep down he knew that theirs was always a temporary arrangement, and now it had come to an end. Zabuza owes her nothing, and he's already learned all that he had wanted from her. Sure, he's alone, but objectively, with her skills but without the girl herself, he has all the advantages of their partnership without any of the extra work, or the annoyance of her constant company. Really, he should be relieved.

But then she starts to call for him.

He closes his eyes and resolutely sets to ignoring her, though there's an almost-frantic note in her voice that he has a hard time reconciling with her usual state of complete apathy. Her cries, he can resist. It's the sound's abrupt stop that draws him out of the alley.

Reflexively, he peeks out from around the corner, and in a moment of dizzying stupidity, before he can stop himself, he's halfway to the cart.

Kotone is dangling, lifelessly, in the ninja's grasp—and there's an awful moment where Zabuza thinks that the man may have broken her neck—but her eyes flutter for a moment before she seems to lose consciousness again. The ninja— what she'd explained as a 'chunin' by the looks of him—scoops her up like a ragdoll and lets her fall to the cart with a thud. That's when the blond man turns, and finally notices the other street urchin stopped hesitantly in front of him, his expression fixed somewhere between terror and blinding rage. The chunin's lip curls in disgust and he steps away from the cart to loom over the boy, eyes passing over him, up and down, distastefully.

"Ugh. So you're her little friend, are you?" he sneers. "Relax, I'm not about to damage the livestock. Wouldn't do to turn up short, now, would it?"

He should turn, and run, but his indignation's giving rise to fury and it's making him reckless. Instead he can feel his mouth twitching into half-formed words, and what finally comes out, is "Give her back."

The chunin finds this hilarious, an incredulous bubble of mocking laughter passing into the air with a puff of vapour. He doesn't kick him, just sort of presses the flat of his foot to the boy's chest and shoves him backwards into the slush, like he isn't worth the energy for anything more.

"Then take me with you," he hisses up at the chunin.

"Kid," the man tells him, "You can't appreciate this, but I'm doing you a fucking favour, here." Zabuza glares up at him, but he just narrows his eyes in return. "Who knows? Maybe you won't freeze to death over the winter. Probably will, but it's a better chance than you've got with this lot," he taunts, voice low so the children on the cart can't hear him. "So go back to your gutter, and count yourself lucky, you miserable little wretch."

With that, the chunin leaves him, soaked in the street's wet, dingy snow, and shivering, watching with gritted teeth as the cart peels away and disappears.

Slowly, his heart, hammering away in his rib cage, slows to a normal rhythm. He drags himself to his feet, head still reeling, and more than a little apprehensive of whatever it was that had possessed him to do anything so rash. He knows better than to get into a fight he can't win… especially over something of such little importance.

Still, there's this feeling, heavy in his chest, like something's been stolen from him.

There's a busier street through the alleyway so he passes through and disappears into the crowd. He slips silently between the busied shoppers, lifting a few ryo from the pocket of a man engrossed in a window display, manages to ease an entire wallet out of another's bag, ghostly quiet and invisible. After a long day of thieving, his stomach starts to rumble.

There's a little convenience store a few streets away in the most run-down part of the village, and one of the few places he's never stolen from. The to-go onigiri there are one of the few things they'd ever been able to afford, and the cashier had never asked, or cared, how two filthy street children got their money.

It isn't until he's already paid for the two riceballs that he realizes his mistake.

He glowers at the umeboshi-filled extra, and the dumb little cartoon plum on the front with it's dumb little cartoon plum face, and jams it into his pocket only to find that it won't fit. He reaches in to remove the obstruction, and withdraws the pill bottle.

He stares at it, as he walks, and her stupid sour rice ball she isn't here to eat, before cramming them into a separate pocket, each and starts on the much more reasonable salmon ball he always got for himself.

That stupid chunin was right about one thing. It's already colder here now than it was in the dead of winter in his home village. The farther inland you go, he had learned, the colder it gets, until the perpetual snowfall of the highest places in the mountains.

When he takes stock of his surroundings again, he finds himself on the street where the cart had been parked, deep tracks from its wheels cut into the slush, and hoof prints marking its trail. There's only one way out of the village, and that's where it's headed.

Kotone had cleared out their money for the pills, and there isn't anything else in their little hideaway worth going back for. There's an onigiri in his hand, another in his pocket, and a few coins stuck beneath it. He's left with less, after all. The first time, he had left with nothing, and he'd made it here.

He follows the cart's route through the heart of the village and then up the slope leading out of the ravine it sits in. There are ninja posted by the gate, but they pay him no mind as he passes. Eventually the road splits. Even without the sigh post he can tell one way leads to the coast, the way he'd come from, and another leads into the woods and towards the mountains. The cart went right towards the sea, and coincidentally, that's where he was headed too.

He remembers the way, soon following the familiar scent of briny sea air, and there's grey light creeping over the horizon by the time he reaches the nearest little fishing village—not his own, thankfully, but similar enough to make him uneasy. Still, no one will know him here, or know his mother. He follows the tracks right to the door of a barn at the edge of the village. There are little tunnels laid out in long rows beside the barn, halves of hoops buried into the ground and covered with plastic. The bare skeleton of the rings is apparent in many more rows, and peering underneath the plastic sheeting, he can see what probably amounts to one last crop of cabbages for the season. The sun rises late this time of year, so there are already sounds of activity nearby, and he wanders over to a chicken coop. The old farmer jumps when he turns and finds someone there, unexpectedly, just managing to save his collected eggs.

He farmer eyes him warily. "You need something, kid?"

The boy returns his uneasy look, shifting a little in the snow. "D'you rent a cart out to some ninja?"

"Rent?" The man's eyebrows lower into a frown. "They took it. When those… **_things_** need something of you, they aren't **_asking_**."

"Do you know where he went?"

The farmer shakes his head, muttering hurriedly that he doesn't know anything and that the boy shouldn't poke around, before quickly retreating inside his home.

He makes his way to the village streets, and gets a similar reaction from everyone else he asks. They pale, divert their eyes, shoo him away hurriedly, all in hushed tones like the ninja are demons that may appear if they hear themselves discussed. He gathers, though, that the academy is somewhere in the woods up the hill, if only that he's repeatedly warned not to go there.

In the dim morning light, the little fishing village is just starting to wake. There's a little bakery lit up and emitting a sweet smell, though the sign says it's closed, shopkeepers are readying their stalls, and the docks are teeming with activity as fishermen set out for their morning catch. The people he speaks with are eager to get rid of him, but no one's outright hostile, so he risks approaching one of the bigger fishing boats and waits for one of the men working on the deck to notice him there.

There's uproarious laughter when he tells them he's looking for work.

It's a small enough village that they know immediately that he's a stranger. "Kid," says one of them, leaning over the side to better hear him, "where are your parents?"

"Don't have any," he replies simply.

"How old are you?"

"Eight," he lies, meeting the adult's eye unwavering.

"D'you know anything about fishing?"

"No," he admits. "But I learn fast."

"Kid," the man starts. He's getting tired of that word. "The water's freezing this time of year. If you fall in, you'll die."

The boy doesn't flinch. "I won't fall in, then."

"Hm," the man seems to consider him (thankfully he seems amused rather than offended by the boy's boldness) and asks what he wants in return. Zabuza tells him, food and a place to sleep, and the man offers him a hand up onto the deck, and tells him that they'll let him stay in their basement if he earns his keep today. "Lucky you, we're shorthanded," he tells the boy. The younger man aboard, he learns, is his son. The missing crew member, he learns, is also his son, still healing from the loss of a hand to the cold.

"Don't fall in," the man warns him again, a bit more grimly than before.

That should probably frighten him, but it doesn't. He has the sense to be cautious, of course, but trusts his balance and ability. The boat goes from buoy to buoy, dragging up the little crab pot attached, dumping them out onto the deck then baiting the trap and tossing it back. The fisherman's son shows him, begrudgingly and clearly incredulous of his ability, how to tell the ones they keep from the ones they toss back and leaves that task, apparently formerly his younger brother's role, to him.

He has to work quickly and the crabs all look the same at first, but Zabuza's always been a quick study. He knows he's smart, and knows to trust his instincts, and he isn't afraid of the great, wriggling sea-bugs or their claws, so soon he can sort them fast enough to appease the young deckhand and earn himself a place on their trip the next morning.

He's been near the ocean before, seen it stretch away from the beach to the horizon, but he's never been on it, been so far from shore that there's nothing but dark, choppy water as far as the eye can see in all directions. That should scare him too, but it doesn't.

It was the biggest boat there, but still small, and there isn't much between him and the icy depths below. He can feel it, tossing the boat, this great unstoppable force of nature beneath his feet. It's cold, unforgiving death they sail on, but he's comfortable here. At home, even, with the cold spray on his face and incessant swaying, up and down. It's dangerous, but all kinds of things can be deadly, and the ocean, at least, makes no attempt to hide what it is, makes no apologies for its nature.

Their family home is small, but warm and cozy in an unfamiliar way that makes him very uncomfortable and a little bit angry. There's never any mistaking him for anything but hired help, barely noticing his presence unless there's work to be done, but they're on the pleasant side of indifferent towards him, and that's better than he was expecting. He only sees the younger son occasionally in passing, the empty end of his arm bound, before he hurries back to the safety his room, away from the strange boy living in their cellar.

The basement's cramped, largely a storage space, but they make room for a bedroll between the crates of junk and it's better than he's slept in months. In the early hours of the morning, he finds that the fisherman's wife has brought him a bowl of rice and a set of her injured son's hand-me-downs. He just stares at them for a moment, to the offered things and then back to her, uncertain, but finally struggles to say something in return. He never manages a real thank you, but from her expression it seems she can tell that was his intention, however clumsily executed. He isn't good at expressing gratitude, but he hasn't had many opportunities to practice.

They're called Ishida, collectively, and though he's sure they all mention names at one point or another he's never formally introduced to anyone and by the time he realizes that he doesn't know any of their given names, it seems far too late to ask. They don't bother to learn his, as he's always 'boy' or 'hey you,' but the distance is preferable, really, and he's content to exist around the edges of their lives as long as there's food and shelter. After he unintentionally sneaks up on Ishida for the third time that day, they start jokingly calling him a ghost.

It's just as they're hauling their catch off the boat on his third day with them that Ishida notices a crowd gathered by the beach, and stalks over to investigate.

"I wouldn't," Ishida's son calls after him as he jogs to catch up with the man's stride, but Zabuza ignores him and is soon poking his way between adults to try and get a look at whatever it is they're fussing over.

"Shit, SHIT." There's a sturdy hand on his shoulder as Ishida pulls him away, and steers him forcefully back towards the boat. "Shit, kid, don't look at that."

He furrows his brow, trying to crane his neck for a look at it anyway. "What is it?"

"It's one of the kids from the ninja academy up the way," the fisherman replies with a sigh. "Whenever one dies, they just dump 'em right over the edge. They wash up here, sometimes."

Something in his stomach sinks. He isn't afraid of dead bodies, not anymore. But something's dawning on him and it's putting the little hairs on the back of his neck on end. "They die." It's not a question, not really.

"Most of 'em by the look of it," Ishida says, mouth quirked distastefully. "They bring 'em in by the cartful, and a handful come out." The man shakes his head, scratching at a greying temple. "Poor boy. We usually don't get 'em like that this early."

Boy. It was a boy that died.

The knot in his gut loosens, but only a little.

As they don't involve him in actually selling their catch, his workday starts and ends early, leaving him ample time to contemplate the forest up the hill along the beach. He ventures farther in every day, but never sees anyone. There are signs of life, though, a clearing just by the edge of the woods bearing tiny footprints and deep gashes in a ringed target. There are other spots similar to it throughout the forest, more frequent the deeper he gets.

And then one day, after a particularly long walk into the woods, he hears people. Slowly, silently, he creeps through the underbrush to get a good look at the children running laps under the watchful eye of a different man in the same dull purple flak jacket. Carefully he watches each child as they pass at the point closest to him, keeps watching until he's sure he's seen everyone twice.

She isn't there.

He slinks away, back towards town. It's not that he has his heart set on seeing her, he assures himself, but she's here, and he's here, and he may as well try and track her down.

If she's even alive, that is.

He comes back at the same time the next afternoon, and still there's no sign of her.

Many go in, few come out. Some, but not all, wash up on the beach bloated and unrecognizable. How many others must simply disappear into the waves, never to be seen again? Food for sharks, and hagfish, and the whole host of bottom feeders he knows prowls the ocean floor.

_'It's a better chance than you have with this lot.' _

He doesn't bother coming back the next day.

/ / / /

The weather turns so suddenly that they barely have time to react. There's little they can do but hang on as the storm tosses the boat on high waves, and seemingly keep it from capsizing with nothing but willpower and luck. And lots, and lots of bailing.

It's mid-January, and this was meant to be their last outing for the season. Now, caught in bad weather at the very farthest point of their route, they've been blown so far off course that the nearest port is on the island closest to the Land of Fire. He had been suitably alarmed, but kept his head, and when they finally reach port Ishida tells him as much. They're stuck there for the few days it takes to repair a hole in the side of the hull.

Zabuza notices a few things about the farthest island, besides the sight of Hi no Kuni in the distance on the far side. It's warmer here than it should be for January, and there are ninja everywhere. They mill about in the streets (nervous civilians parting like a school of fish scattered by sharks), they gather by the shore to watch for enemy attack.

Apparently, the world is at war. This is the first he's heard of it.

What he can gather is that this is a strategic point that the Land of Fire's ninja (whoever those are) want to acquire to gain ground against the ninja from the Land of Lightning. Kirgakure was largely uninvolved, uninterested in anything but protecting its own borders from all sides.

Technically at war with everybody, all the time.

The more he studies the Kirigakure shinobi the more he's stuck by how young they are, maybe only a few years older than he is. There are quite a few of them but they don't seem to speak to one another, just sort of occupying nearby space without interacting.

More often than not their eyes have a very familiar, hollow, stare.

/ / / /

Ishida's wife and youngest son had been waiting for them by the docks, overjoyed at their family's safe return. Just watching felt like an intrusion, so Zabuza wandered away along the rocky beach, kicking a stone along, absently.

It was well after dark when they got back to the fishing village, the full moon providing the only light. He reaches down to the stones, fumbles through them until he's found one suitable for skipping, and pitches the flat rock as far as he can. He can't really see the stone, just the moonlight on the ripples it sends across the water.

He's been able to eat, and sleep, and between the work on the boat and practicing, when he has time to himself, what he'd learned from… well, that he'd learned about fighting, he's stronger now than he's been in a long time. Probably ever.

He'd filled the little plastic bottle with pebbles to provide more of a challenge, and keeps it in his pocket. Not that anyone would know it was there. Keeping his movements steady enough, even quickly, to stay silent is becoming second nature and it's less and less often that he hears a rattle, and more and more frequently that he catches someone off guard.

He doesn't need to steal anymore, but it's a skill he has, and he means to perfect it.

The moon hangs low in the sky, bright and pale, illuminating the hilltop and the dark silhouette of trees cutting across it. And then something passes between them.

He watches, and waits. Again, something small is moving in the clearing closest to the edge, a little shadow darting through the glow. Slowly, cautiously, he approaches, creeping silently through the snow towards the figure.

He manages to sneak up on her, and she doesn't turn when he approaches. The girl is throwing a knife at a target, repeatedly, and he takes in the black pigtails, blue where the moonlight hits them, her height, the graceful brutality of each movement as she drives the knife into the splintered wood. When she turns, just long enough to be sure she's seen him, her eyes are icy blue and vacant. She looks through him like she hadn't really seen him and turns, the set of her shoulders stubborn, back to her work.

When he speaks, the change is immediate. The tension leaves her posture, her hands slack at her sides such that the knife falls from her fingers to the snowy ground below. When she turns, her eyes are wide, and she blinks at him, owlish, before slowly stealing closer. He tenses when she throws her arms around his shoulders and pulls him close.

He had expected more of a reaction than she'd given, initially, but he hadn't expected this.

"Zabuza," she says softly once she finally lets go of him, though not entirely. "You're here."

"Yeah, well," the boy shrugs, breaks the embrace by shoving gently where his hands had come to rest on her sides, and ducking under her arms. "Warmer by the coast, right? Thought I'd have a better chance here over the winter."

She nods, that smile he may be imagining still on her face, and accepts this as a valid reason for his presence. There's an overturned log by the target and she scurries over to it, gesturing to the empty space beside her, insistently, until he sits.

She presses him for details: where he's been, how he's been doing. So he tells her about Ishida, and his work on the fishing boat, and his little corner of their basement. He omits everything with the blond chunin or the cart, but she doesn't ask, content to take their meeting here as a lucky coincidence.

He swears she's taller than the last time he saw her, like a bit of food was all the needed to kickstart a growth spurt that's left him looking up, a little, to speak to her. He's tempted to ask her about the dead boy that washed up on the beach, but thinks better of it.

"So," he starts instead, eyeing the battered target. "I bet they're teaching you lots of new stuff."

"Oh yes," she enthuses, nodding, getting back to her feet and stepping back so he has room to join her in the clearing, "all kinds of things."

The girl draws the knife—a kunai, she asserts— again from the holster at her leg, and carefully presses it in to his hands. The metal's warm where she held it, the blade clicking against the bolster where it's set into the handle, and he examines it carefully, taking in the flattened shape, the glint of moonlight off the flat of the blade, and the razor sharp edge. It's a tool for cutting, and stabbing, and throwing. It looks dangerous, but useful, and that's all that really matters to him.

"Here," she says, fixing the form of his grasp on the wrapped handle, and just like that they've settled back into their comfortable partnership. "Let me show you."

* * *

**Author's Notes: Hey again everyone! A huge thank you to everyone reading this, and I sincerely hope you're enjoying! A huge thank you to everyone that's reviewed, too, that absolutely makes my day. Also really happy to see a lot of people following that had been reading Breathe Again, I hope you're enjoying the revamp, and thank you so much for sticking with me all these years. **

**This one's a little shorter than I had intended, but it seemed like a good place to end it. See you all next time~**

**(I know absolutely nothing about any kind of fishing. That's just what I got from internet searches, scaled down significantly OTL) **


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

It's hard for her to say, exactly, what's different.

Kotone doesn't pay attention to the swirling mass of whatever it is inside of her, can't tell one part of it from another, but in a vague general kind of sense, something's changed— like maybe there's a little less empty space in her heart. She's gotten better at getting out of bed in the morning, she notices, and in class she's redoubled her efforts, tapped into an entirely new source of resolve. When she learns things now, she listens not only with how to replicate the technique in mind, but how to _**explain**_ it later, and that's an entirely different level of understanding.

Sometimes she rushes to her clearing to find it abandoned, but more often than not he's already there and training. By the way he's improved, she's pretty sure he's been practicing all along.

He asks her about the war, and she tells him what they've told her. The Land of Water was mostly concerned with protecting its current property, and had very little interest in what the mainland got up to. The conflict itself is confusing and convoluted, and he's never heard of half the places involved. When she meets him the next evening, she has her notebook in tow, and sits him down to go over the crude map she'd drawn in one of her earliest classes.

They talk a lot about secrets, in her classes. Ninja do secret things, and know secret things, and it's important to keep those secrets from other villages' ninja. But these books are just full of maps, and history, and simple math and spelling. The techniques she learns are simple, and academy students everywhere can do them. Besides, things like that have to be kept from their enemies. Zabuza isn't the village's enemy, so what harm is it if she shows him things? She'd taught him things her father had taught her, and nothing bad had come of it.

"There's lots of stuff about the world in there," she tells him as he thumbs through the pages, an odd little scowl set into his sharp features. "You can borrow it if you want."

He shoots her a sharp look, flipping another page without really looking at it. "That's not funny."

"No, really," she insists, her own dark eyebrows dipping lower in confusion. "It's all full up so I started a second one. You can have it if you want." He snaps the book shut and shoves it back into her hands, squaring his shoulders and grumbling something disparaging about her stupid notes under his breath. She blinks at him, quirks her head to the side thoughtfully. "Can you not…?"

"I didn't know you _**could**_," Zabuza snaps.

"Father taught me."

His eyes flicker back in her direction, skeptically. "I can't really picture that guy reading you bedtime stories."

"I'm not sure what that is," she admits, "but he gave me little exercises to do, like the ones they gave us in class." The girl shifts closer to him on their makeshift bench, prods him with the spiral bound notebook until he looks over again. "Lots of people couldn't at first," she reassures him, opening the book to the earliest lesson. "I've got all the basic stuff here. See? So this is all the hiragana characters, and…"

She can see him watching her point out the symbols out of the corner of his eye, and gradually he turns as a kind of admission that he's paying attention. She gets him to confess that he does know how to write his name, and nudges him with the pen until he accepts it, and slowly, hesitantly, scrawls it as neatly as he can out onto the page.

The boy's struggling, and it's clearly been a while since he's learned it, or seen it, and what he has written isn't quite anything. She studies it, carefully, and she's pretty sure she recognizes the kanji he's aiming for. She takes the pen back and, as neatly as she can, prints out the nearest thing she can think of that would be pronounced that way, though the meaning of it is a little unusual. "Is it like this?" He nods, and she hums to herself as she studies it again. So that's his name, then. It's not like it changes anything, but it's still something new she can ascribe to her friend, another part of him she recognizes now.

She lays the kanji of her own name beside his, in the same dark blue ink. "And that's me," she adds, pointing to it with the tip of the pen, doodles a few easy little symbols above it. "So it's like the fruit, and then this is the instrument, and then a sound. So that's the characters for all those things." She prints out the hiragana for the sounds beneath each character, like a key. Altogether there are only really four different sounds in his name (Oh. Well, four different ones. That can't be bad luck, and he doesn't believe in any of that stuff so vehemently that he's probably safe from it anyway) and five in hers, so that's nine different symbols with a point of reference. With the help of her notes from class, there's something for every one of them, a little doodle of something he'd recognize with the spelling beside it.

She insists that he take the notes home with him, and by the time she heads back to the academy he could stumble through most of the simplest sentences she'd copied down. The major stumbling block is his humiliation, because as soon as he has trouble with anything he tends to call the whole thing stupid, and sulk. She can always coax him back into trying again, though, and he must really want to learn if he lets her.

He takes to weapons in a heartbeat, and he can keep up to her in hand-to-hand combat as none of her classmates can.

From her description alone, Zabuza figures out how to mold chakra before she does.

It's like all he needs to find it is to know it's there, gripped by the concept of drawing the energy from his body and bending it to his will. She _**knows**_ about the theory behind the techniques she's trying to learn enough to relay them, and once she's shown him the handseals that she's practiced again, and again without any result, it's only a few days before he successfully swaps places with a sizeable rock he'd dragged out of the woods for exactly that purpose.

He's thrilled, and it's good to see him so happy. She feels sick, though, at the thought of her own incessant failure. This is all she was meant for, and she can't do it right.

Insistently, Kotone pulls the boy down to sit beside her, and hopeful, implores him to explain it to her. Her teachers have tried, but he knows her better than they do and maybe, just maybe, she'll understand him better.

He tries. Zabuza tells her, like her teachers did, that she needs to find the power sleeping inside of her and draw from it, and she can only shake her head, pigtails swaying. "There's nothing inside me," she tells him quietly, hands balling into fists in her lap. "Just nothing."

She thinks, and searches, and lies awake at night trying to tap the hidden reservoir of chakra, but never seems to get any closer. Just when she thinks she's on to something she loses track of the feeling and the energy she'd probably just imagined fades to nothing. Her teachers are indifferent to her shortcomings at first, and initially she's hardly the only one that can't manage a replacement or a clone. By spring, though, when she still fails to produce any E-ranked ninjutsu technique, her current teacher pulls her aside after class.

"I'm usually not supposed to intervene," the man, tall with early greying hair, tells her as he crouches to better speak with the six year old. "But you're good at everything else. I worked with your father on a mission or two," he confesses, and she maybe stands up a bit straighter, eyes wide. "He had excellent chakra control, there's no reason for you to be having this much trouble."

He sighs, and looks back at her wearily as the last of the other students filters from the room, and he has to shoot a quick warning to the children waiting outside who begin to press their way in.

"Look," he says sternly. "In about a month, we're going down to the ocean, and we're practicing water-walking. It's a much, much harder technique, and it's entirely possible that you'll freeze or drown if you can't pull it off. I've spoken to the others, and they've all mentioned you among the best in their subjects, so it would be a shame to lose a good ninja to something so stupid."

She nods, silently, and the man studies her carefully.

"Are you _**absolutely**_ sure you can't find your chakra reservoirs? You don't feel anything?"

She sinks a sharp little eye-tooth into her pale lip. "Sometimes I…" Kotone begins, that kind of impatience that creeps up when she's tried and tried and nothing happens settling into her again and knotting her stomach. "Sometimes I think I've found something, and I try to grab on to it, and follow it, but it always disappears." Her hand snakes up through her ponytail to grasp the hair against her head.

"Wait," the man interrupts her suddenly, taps on her hand where it rests against her skull. "Is that where you lose it? Right here?"

She nods, and takes hold of the other side the same way.

"Kid," he says, a disbelieving little smile creeping across his face. "I think what you're feeling is called a chakra gate. Most jonin can work one or two, but… Huh. That's rare, in a kid your age."

"Really?" Slowly, her fingers disentangle from her hair, and slip back to her sides. "What do you do with a chakra gate?"

"It's a bottleneck on your chakra system, limits the amount going through the channels. But if you're crazy enough, you could force it open," he looks down at her, and smirks. "You afraid to die, kid?" Kotone shakes her head. "Then go for it."

Through her other classes that day, the little kunoichi focuses on the chakra gate in her brain, a point of reference for the rest of her chakra system and carefully, not giving up when she feels it dissipate, she's able to feel out the energy circulating through her. It's not a single well as she'd been expecting but a river of sorts, a flow from her center and out and then back to pool there again, the way blood flows through her heart. That same heart races when she leaves her last class that day, and she doesn't even bother going to the mess hall before sprinting, full-tilt, to her little practice grounds and just sitting, quietly in the thawing snow, following it and tracing its path and finally, _**finally**_, gathering it up around her, enveloping herself in it.

When Zabuza finally comes trudging up the hill, there she is, two of her.

The closer Kotone flickers with her waning focus, and waivers, blinks out of existence for a moment as she catches sight of him and divides her attention. "_**Look**_," she says breathlessly, from him to the illusion and back again, sort of bouncing in place with this sudden boundless energy.

Slowly the look of shock on his face slides into a sly grin. "Well," he says as he steps closer to inspect her work, "looks like you aren't defective after all, huh?" He lets out a little laugh, and turns to her, still smiling but in a way that feels more genuine (it's something in his eyes, she thinks). "Told you not to worry, didn't I?"

She nods, still dizzy and light. There's this compulsion to hug him again, but she thinks better of it.

The two practice until they're ready to drop, chakra spent. It's a different kind of fatigue, not just an ache in her muscles or a burning in her lungs (though there's a fair bit of that too) but something deeper, a feeling of having been drained. Though she doesn't have his natural ease (and probably never will), her chakra molding is passable; and passable is, at the very least, an improvement on non-existent.

Kotone gathers her chakra around herself in class the next day, cloaks herself in it and imbues it with her will. When she takes on the appearance of the little blonde girl seated beside her, there's more than one shocked yelp, an approving nod from their instructor, and an enthusiastic cheer from the back that could only be Hatsuka. She lets out a long breath as the illusion breaks, and it's like a knot pulled tight in her chest has finally come apart.

Dinner that night, as it often is, is fish and rice, simple but filling and a reliable fuel for an army in training. Among the echoing din of chatter and moving trays she notices something just out of the corner of her eye and has to do a double-take, a morsel of mackerel halfway to her mouth as she skips towards the table and blithely sits down beside herself.

"I've been wanting to try this," the thing that is not her says, and though it comes out in her voice it does not sound like her at all. The mannerisms that bleed through the borrowed form are familiar, though, the giddy bouncing tone and the way he throws himself, haphazard, into the seat. "But I figured you'd think I was making fun of you, before." She should look away and ignore him, as she always does, but she can't. Kotone can only stare, blinking stupidly at her own face beaming, warmly, back at her, as the imposter lets out a high, silvery, giggle. It's not an expression she's ever seen set into her own features, not a sound she's ever heard. "I knew you could do it," Hatsuka says in her voice, nudging her on her shoulder amicably before he's himself again and flits off after some friend passing by.

She has the girls bathroom to herself again that night, and she practices smiling like that in the mirror. She's tried before, but it's always come out forced and uncomfortable but now she has an image in her mind of what it would look like if it was natural, and she fumbles, awkwardly, until she gets it right. She may be an unfeeling instrument of her kage's will, but there may come a time where she's asked to impersonate someone who isn't.

Kotone studies the happy little girl grinning back at her, with a smile that reaches all the way to her eyes and shows the gaps where adult teeth are growing in. It's unfamiliar, but…. nice. It's a nice, warm sort of sensation, she thinks, but something inside her is aching.

/ / / /

When the fishing season is over, and all the repairs to the equipment have been made, the Ishidas have no more work for Zabuza, and have to turn him away. They're generous enough to let him keep the clothes they'd given him, that and Kotone's notebook bundled in a plastic shopping bag, but he was a temporary hire, and by the next time they're able to set off Ishida's injured son should be well enough to take back his post. Zabuza is of no use to them now, and with no steady income in the off-season, they can't afford to be charitable.

The dead of winter here is milder than it is inland, but still too cold for sleeping outside to be a viable option for very long. He spends a night curled between two close-set buildings to block the wind, and another two hiding in an unlocked toolshed.

He regrets mentioning to Kotone, off-hand, that the Ishidas wouldn't keep him any longer because the next time he sees her she's smuggled a mushed ball of rice and a lump of fish from her own supper for him, wrapped in a paper napkin and suspiciously molded into the shape of the largest pocket on her calf.

He means to refuse it, embarrassment making his face burn against the cold (because he doesn't need her help. He _**doesn't**_,) but his stomach rumbles traitorously so he relents and eats the damn thing.

There are still cod fishermen going out in the mornings, but they all laugh him away when he approaches them. On his fourth day without work, though, a man from the boat he tries recognizes him from Ishida's crew and directs him to a woman at the little fish market in town that buys some of their catch. Most of the village's seafood is shipped inland, or to Kirigakure, but a little stays locally. Years ago, the man tells him wistfully, they could sell to the mainland too, but times had been much tougher since the war cut off that market.

She's indeed been looking for help, but the grizzled old woman eyes him warily as she lets him into her shop. Still, she tentatively puts him to work. He works hard, but even on his best behaviour he's a surly, foreign-looking gremlin of a boy and it's clear immediately that, small as he is, customers find him off putting when he helps her run her stall. She sets him gutting and cleaning fish instead, and as she demonstrates, brusquely, he gets the feeling that she's looking for an excuse to be rid of him. He catches on quickly, though, and he's alarmingly good with a knife for a child.

She doesn't ask how he learned, so he doesn't tell her.

It's a similar arrangement to the last. The woman lets him sleep in her shop after hours, keep his things in her back room, and he eats what she gives him. It's less free time that he had before, so he trains even harder when he's able, and still he sneaks off to meet with Kotone when they release her for the evening and he begrudgingly finds himself looking forward to it.

There's no reason to keep going back. He has all he needs to take care of himself and has no intention of enlisting, but still, he finds himself trudging towards the little clearing whenever he's able. Even if he can't use them, there's power in the things she's learning and it's tempting to have, all the same.

With a place to sleep again, he's able to resume his work at deciphering her notes. She has two other notebooks that she uses for her written classes, and she switches out between them, lets him borrow one, uses the other, and then swaps again. It's slow going, and he'll probably never enjoy it, but he's getting the hang of reading it. There are passages about other countries, and other hidden villages, and long, almost worshipful, descriptions of each Mizukage's life and accomplishments in minute detail (they sound like a bunch of jerks).

She draws up little doodles for him at the back of the book, everything labeled. There's a beach drawn out, and he recognizes the words for fish, for shell, for crab, and with what might be two lumpy people. One has pigtails, the other spikey hair and an aggressive frowning face.

"Is that supposed to be me?" He asks her flatly when he flips to the back of the newly-exchanged booklet. Kotone nods innocently. He's starting to suspect that she does, in fact, have a sense of humor.

There are other words he doesn't recognize when he looks at it again after returning to the shop, but he puzzles them out quickly: sun, sand, girl, boy. There's another word written between the two human figures and it takes him a longer moment before he pieces it together: friends. It says friends.

As the snow begins to thaw, more and more of her classes are outdoors, and now that she's there to tell him when she does what, he's able to eavesdrop on the right class as he hadn't before. She warns him against it, but he wants to see first-hand, and when he has the chance he creeps up to the outdoor training areas and watches through the underbrush. She catches sight of him and immediately snaps her focus back to her instructor (currently showing them new shuriken techniques) to avoid drawing attention to him.

He's been practicing at moving quietly, still, pushing the speed and type of movements he can make silently. Since he's been able to command his chakra, his ability's become almost inhuman, as sufficient focus to the soles of his feet where they meet with the ground seems to dampen contact to nothing.

No one ever catches him watching. There's a tense moment where he's sure a small boy with wavy brown hair is aware of him, but if he was he keeps it to himself.

Slicing through translucent fish flesh or cleaning their entrails from the floor, when his mind can wander, he finds himself dwelling on her (he refuses to call it worry). He watches her struggle with her own energies, nightly, to the point where there's frustration and hopelessness bleeding through her apathy. He'd genuinely tried to help her, but he isn't good with words, and he isn't sure there _**are**_ words for what she has to do, just an instinct, a feeling. She insists that she's just empty inside, and maybe she's right. Maybe he had only imagined the tiny waiver in her voice.

Then, she succeeds, and the look in her eyes, he thinks, through the dampened filter of her reaction to everything, might scale to elation in anyone else. It could always just be his imagination, or, perhaps, it just takes a lot to move her a little, and she herself is oblivious to it. It's an odd satisfaction, this thought that maybe, just _**maybe**_, he can read her near-invisible cues.

It's soon after her initial brush with chakra that she tells him they'd gone down to the beach that day, and tried to keep themselves upright on the surface of the water. He's already been channeling his energy to the soles of his feet, but this is an application he had never considered, and he's eager to try.

She tells him, casually as they make their way towards the ocean, how a boy had wandered out past the ankle-deep shallows then toppled in and drenched himself in icy water. He hadn't drowned, but with their medic in only a few days a month, he'd just bundled up as best he could and curled up in bed. He hadn't woken up in the morning.

He considers her shaky-at-best precision and drags her back up the slope to a deep puddle he'd noted in the forest.

She tells him about a test they'd done in class, one day, with a little slip of paper that responds to chakra. Kotone, like many of the students, had the paper fall away into wet pulp in her hands. The boy who may have noticed him spying on their class had his crumble into dry confetti, and someone's paper had spontaneously caught fire.

"I'm sorry," she said. "If I'd known it would fall apart like that I'd have tried to save you a piece first."

Zabuza peers over the sheer drop at the edge of the clearing where it overlooks the sea. He doesn't need any litmus test to indicate what it is that speaks to him. "It's okay," he says, assuredly, remembering how unrelenting power of the waves had felt like home. "I know."

They improve, steadily, as the days get longer. They waste little time on genjutsu, Kotone because it's pure chakra control and Zabuza because he has no interest. Their skill with weapons improves, both partial to the kunai and halfway through her first summer they let her requisition a few more. It's meant for practice with multiple targets in sequence, but unintentionally, is also useful for two trainees. Her aim is good with the smaller projectiles, but they're fiddly, more a distraction than a real weapon, and they don't hold nearly the appeal that the knife has, sturdy and reliable. Both excel in taijutsu and ninjutsu, though Kotone prefers the former because molding her chakra doesn't come as naturally to her as physical attacks, and why waste the time gathering energy together when you could just kick the target in the face in the same time. Zabuza prefers the latter, because why would you just punch someone when you could throw a lake at them like the wrath of an angry god? (He isn't there yet, but she assures him it's possible.)

Her technique changes, though. While initially their styles had been similar, she learns the strategies embraced by Kirigakure above all others. She doesn't retreat anymore, just throws herself headlong at him and attacks, ceaselessly. He prefers to hang back, and wait for an opening. They fight to a stalemate more often than not. Kotone is quick, into the space of his guard where her preference for using her elbows and knees as much as her fists gives her enough room to work. She dodges until she can get close enough, always with a forward momentum. She darts and ducks out of the way, agile and graceful. Zabuza keep her at a distance with well-aimed attacks and blocking whatever she throws at him. It works well for her, and she's talented, but it's exhausting and reckless and waiting for the right moment to strike perfectly suits him best.

When fall comes around, he picks up extra work at the apple orchard on the far side of the village. There are other children trying to make some extra money for themselves this way, all older than he is, but he's faster and agile and more than keeps up with them.

The pay isn't much, but it's the first time he's ever earned money honestly, and it's more than he's ever been able to steal. He hides it away in the back room of the shop, carefully in an empty jar that still smells of brine. It isn't much, but it's his. Who knows? Maybe he'll stay here. Maybe, in time, he'll be able to save up for rent on a room of his own. When he's older, he'll get real work on one of the fishing boats. Zabuza settles into his bedroll on the shop floor, and daydreams a future for himself until he drifts off to dream in earnest.

People here largely pretend not to notice him, but it's better than outright disgust, and he can live with that. He doesn't particularly like any of them, anyway. (This village also has the distinction of being closes to their country's hidden village, so Kotone could visit him all the time, couldn't she? Not that this is a selling point, of course).

Into the winter he picks up odd jobs where he can, and though the village as a whole is wary of him, he does good work and as that fact spreads, more and more people are willing to set him to work for a few hours here and there. His small savings grows slowly as he adds a few coins at a time. He could do well for himself here, he thinks, and it's probably the first time he's considered his future past surviving the next day.

Kotone bounds over to him one day in early November, and explains, words coming more quickly than usual, that the last day of the year, just for that one day, she can leave the academy. In fact, she's required to leave, and won't be allowed back until nine AM the next day. For that one day the little fishing village is no longer forbidden to her.

"Where are you going to sleep?" he asks, raising a thin eyebrow. She just gives a little shrug.

"They say we should be able to fend for ourselves for that long," she says, the uselessness of anyone who can't implied. Uselessness and failure making for a worthless shinobi are reoccurring themes in her notes. "And besides, I've slept outside before."

"You could probably stay with me for a day," he says, giving a non-committal shrug in return. "The old lady's a bit prickly, but she's not so bad." The girl's expression brightens and he braces himself in anticipation of another hug.

His work cleaning the day's stock starts just after she's to be shut out of the academy, so he agrees to meet her in their training spot if she'll hang around or entertain herself until he's done. At six am the next morning he leads her, yawning and still bleary eyed, back to the shop.

There's a muffled greeting from the back as the little bell on the door jingles, followed quickly by an impatient sound that experience tells him is likely urging him to hurry to his duties.

He joins her at the counter, the ice packed fish all laid out ready to clean, and just as he's about to get to work beside her, the old woman lets out a surprised squeak and accidentally knocks a salmon to the floor.

"Zabuza," she starts, paling as she sets eyes on the little blue-eyed creature in her black uniform peeking into their workspace. "Do you know this girl?"

Her tone is warning, something unspoken and heavy. "No," he starts carefully. "She was wandering around outside. She wanted to know if she could spend the day here."

She seems to let out a breath, relaxes a little. Usually, of the two of them, it's him that attracts strange looks, but when shinobi pass through (instructors at the academy on their way in or out, by the way Kotone tells it) everyone does stay well out of their way. The look on the fishwife's face isn't fear now, or disgust, though. Her crinkled eyes have softened into a look of unusual, inexplicable sympathy as she regards the girl and with a sigh, she pulls Zabuza aside. "Sure," she tells him with a sigh. "Why not? But be careful. There will be a lot of those wandering around today— goodness is it that time of year already?— so keep your distance. They aren't all as docile as that one." Zabuza has to fight very, very hard to keep a straight face because he's seen her splinter the wood of their practice target with a well-aimed knife. He's sparred with her and left with deep bruises, had met her when she'd tackled him to the ground, and he's watched enough of her classes to know he's formidable and that she can match him. (Not that he knows her, of course; he found her outside just now.)

"And Zabuza-kun," it's unusual for her to speak with him so fondly, but she's still got that strange look on her face. "Just don't get attached, alright?" she straightens anxiously, adjusts her gory apron and makes a show of returning to her usual grouching, though it seems forced. "I don't want you pining when you should be working."

"Yeah," he says, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to ignore her strange behaviour. "That won't be a problem."

"Alright, shoo. I can manage without you for a day," she says, carefully plucking the knife from his hand and waving him off. She's thin but not frail, sturdy muscle still apparent through wrinkled skin. "Go on then." Glancing back at her skeptically he nevertheless makes his way out into the shop proper.

"She seems nice," Kotone muses as she follows him outside again, the little bell ringing away as they pass.

"I guess," he grunts, jamming his hands into his pockets. He'd taken a fair bit of his money, earlier, and keeps having the thought that he's lost one. "That was really weird, though."

It isn't just her, either. Everywhere they go, he notes people averting their eyes when the fall on her, or some giving her an odd strained smile, which she returns politely. He knows it's fake, because her real one is less than that, smaller, but it's a better forgery than she could manage before. They seem to know what she is immediately from her clothing. There are others like her wandering around, and he notes the same tension in the air between them and the villagers, but Kotone wants to avoid the other students in the worst way, which makes it difficult to investigate properly.

There isn't much to do in the little village but it's the first change of scenery she's had in a year, and the girl is perfectly content to let him show her around. The weather's miserable, the beach is dull, the shops are dull, and she keeps ducking into alleyways or behind street signs when a child she recognizes passes by, but all in all he can't call it a bad day.

He disappears into a shop around nightfall, leaving her outside (it's easier to get things done without everyone shying away from her). He's relieved to find he has a few ryo left when he emerges again with a carton of take-out noodles.

She's adamant, at first, that she doesn't need any but after an extended back and forth of exasperated offers and refusals she finally agrees to share it with him, vowing to pay him back when she has an income (honestly he's just glad to be rid of the feeling of being indebted to her, and considers the few days of smuggled meat and rice repaid).

The two children scale what he knows to be a little grocery shop full of canned and dried food and the last of the fall and earliest of the winter vegetables. They sit on the roof together, sharing their first honest meal. He shares his plans for himself between mouthfuls of fried noodles and thick sauce.

"Hey," she remarks without prompting, "if you're here, I bet I could visit you a lot."

"Huh," he hums to himself, feigning disinterest. "I hadn't thought of that."

/ / / /

When it gets warm enough her second year, swimming becomes a 'life skill,' if not the most important one. Her class spent writing and dividing in the colder months is now strokes, and laps back and forth between floating buoys until she's exhausted and overheating despite the ocean's chill.

She tells her de facto training partner all about it that evening, and not to be outdone, when she meets him the next night his hair is dripping wet and his cheat heaving.

"Wait for me tomorrow, ok?" she suggests, as they instead switch to practicing simple jutsu. "We can go swimming together."

The next evening they make their way down to the section of beach she can access without leaving her permitted range. Zabuza yanks his shirt off over his head, then plunks down to sit on the rocky shore and sets to removing his sandals while she wades into the shallows. Her clothes are tight around the shoulder seams and knees, clinging as they're soaked through, but she's grown so much recently that whoever's manning the supply room looks at her skeptically when they check the requisitions sheet and see just how frequently her name appears for larger clothes or sandals. There are bigger kids in her year, but she's the tallest.

"You're going in like that?" she hears him call from the beach. Kotone turns, the waves lapping at her calves making a pleasant splashing sound, and shouts back to him.

"This is how they have us do it. Your clothes weigh you down, so it's more work like this."

Without breaking eye contact, the boy glowers at her and slowly, challengingly, puts his shoes back on and reaches for the discarded shirt.

In the distance is a tiny island, little more than a bump of earth raised from the shallow water, dotted with a few trees. They make this their goal as they set off. He's a good swimmer already, but she shows him the things they'd taught her to fine-tune each stroke for the best possible efficiency. The water's still cold, and her teeth chatter as she tries to speak to him, but it's not the unbearable biting, burning cold of the winter months.

She pulls ahead just as they're almost to the island. It isn't a race, not really, but they'd been side by side until now, and she doesn't think that he's fallen behind, just that she's suddenly remembering how her instructors had stressed speed as the most useful aspect. Coming up for air every stroke was their primary example of inefficient technique, as the farther you can go between breaths, the less time you waste and the quicker you are.

She hasn't come up for air in a while now. Mist ninja are creatures of water, and the longer she can hold her breath, the more use she'll be. She brushes something solid, and for a moment, she thinks she's reached the island, but it's just a huge smooth bump of rock rising up from the bottom so she ignores the burning in her chest and presses on. She thinks she can see the slope of the seabed rise to the surface, and she's almost there as black begins to eat away at the corner of her field of vision.

/ / / /

Zabuza spits out a mouthful of cold seawater as he tries to get a decent look at his progress. The island's steadily growing closer but she's way ahead of him and he swears he's going to come out her every day until he can beat her. He stops, and treads water. He's lost sight of her. There's no way she's reached already but the gently splashing of her strokes has stopped.

All black hair and wet black clothing, he nearly doesn't see her, but he catches sight of something bobbing in the waves and his stomach drops. He dashes over, an instinctive, clumsy dogpaddle, but still manages to catch hold of her just as she slips beneath the surface.

"Kotone?" he tries when he manages to get her head above water. She doesn't answer, and he's struggling to keep her out without going under himself. "Shit, _**shit**_," he sputters as he catches sight of the raised bit of rock hauls her out, cold and still and unresponsive.

"Come on, Kotone," he growls, panic rising in his throat as he crawls out onto the rock beside her. Desperate, he grabs hold of her shoulder and shakes. "_**Breathe, you idiot**_."

Her eyes flutter open and the girl coughs up a mouthful of water. Slowly, still sputtering, he helps her sit up, and she blinks the salt from her eyes.

"What the hell was that?" he demands, once he's sure she's alright.

"I wanted to see how long I could go without breathing." She still sounds a little dazed. A gust of wind blows over the sea and the two children shiver.

Zabuza lets out an exasperated sigh, and glares at her. She explains something about pushing herself, and wanting to be a better ninja but he just keeps leveling that gaze at her until she trails off.

"You saved me," she says quietly, sinking a tooth into her lip when he ignores her, shaken and fuming. "I'm sorry. I think I… overreached, a little."

"A little," he grumbles back, bitterly. When he glances back at her she's giving him that kicked puppy look, up through her eyelashes and with another heavy sigh he relents. He watches her like a hawk as they swim back to shore, but she doesn't try anything similar.

"Thanks," she says, warm against his side as the two, soaking wet and shivering, cling to one another on their way back up the slope.

"It's fine," he mutters, deliberately averting his gaze. Somewhere in the storage closet of the little fishmonger's is an empty pill bottle full of pebbles. "Let's just say we're even now."

Summer soon gives way to fall, and fall soon chills to winter well before its genuine start. He gets the feeling she won't be allowed to come back to the shop again that November, so he ignores the suspicious look the shop owner gives him when he dashes off for the afternoon and they spend another lazy day together dodging her classmates and more haunted looks. The barn he'd first encountered upon reaching the village is poorly guarded and often unlocked, so they spend the night in a corner of the hay loft, huddled together for warmth as they'd done so often before.

/ / / /

Her first day of her third year, what's left of her class is instructed to gather up their few possessions, and relocate to the sequestered wing of the academy. They pack up their things in the boxes they were given on day one, and trudge down the hallway to the unfamiliar part of the school.

"Hey! Hey that's my sister," she hears someone shout from front of the group as they pass the open door of a classroom. "Momo! Hey, Momonga!" But before he gets the reaction he'd wanted, the chunin leading them has grabbed Hatsuka roughly by the arm and sends him skidding across the hallway with a sharp jerk. "Sorry," he stammers as he sinks back into the crowd under the instructor's withering gaze. "Sorry."

The third year dorm room is considerably smaller, with fewer bunks. Of the two hundred children that arrived, one hundred and forty remain, the rest lost to cold, exhaustion, sickness, or accidents.

Kotone manages to secure herself a bottom bunk in the far corner of the room, preferring the cozy feeling of the lower half than the open top.

Before she can stop him, Hatsuka slides his possessions into the space beside hers under the bed and grins at her before walking straight up the wall and falling onto his mattress with a worrying creak. Hatsuka is scrawny and average in hand-to-hand combat and classes, but he's good with weapons and his chakra control is second to none. She's often observed him hanging from walls or the ceiling through chakra focused through the soles of his sandals, seemingly just for the fun of it.

Her free time is now midday, and she leaves Zabuza a note in their training ground. It's less often that he can manage to slip away from working, and for less time, but he practices on his own to the point of collapse and what time they do have to train together is intense and productive.

They learn their first suiton technique, the only one they'll be taught as academy students. The water clone jutsu is difficult, far beyond what most shinobi are required to learn before they're genin, but their instructors assure them that no other hidden village's academy curriculum is as involved and demanding as theirs. Zabuza takes to it quickly but soon she too can pull together a wobbly watery form and improves from there.

Third year brings about another new task unique to kirigakure. "The hidden mist technique," their temporary ninjutsu instructor tells them coolly, "used in conjunction with the silent killing technique, is the pride of our village, mastered only by the greatest among us. It falls to the rest of you," he continues producing a number of little bells, looped through string, "to not fuck it up for them."

They tie the scuffed, bent little bells around their necks like a class of housecats. They're to be worn at all times, and that first class is nothing but moving about trying to keep the bell as still as possible whole their instructor stands, eyes closed, in the middle of the room. In all their classes, from now on, anyone caught making excessive noise will be reprimanded, until they can keep quiet in all things, reflexively.

She's practiced this before, and it comes easily. Creeping around the room, slowly, like a slow whirlpool around the chunin. A few students seem to have decided that it's safest not to move at all, but most of them try and the room is nearly completely silent. There are a few heavy footfalls, a few loud intakes of breath, but for today it's only the sound of the bell they're focused on. It's actually a rather fun game, she thinks to herself.

It's just then that Hatsuka trips over a loose panel in the floor and crashes into her.

There's a jarring clatter of ringing metal and the chunin moves so quickly she hardly sees it. She and the chestnut-haired boy are sent arcing through the air by the blow to fall hard against the stone wall of the room. The side of Kotone's body that made contact is on fire, her face stinging severely, and the room spins around her when she cracks her eyes open. She ducks her head, ashamed, and vowed to herself to do better.

"If a real enemy had heard you," the chunin hisses at them, "you'd both be dead."

The tension is palpable from then on, in every class and in the hallways students wincing and glancing around nervously whenever there's a jingle. When an instructor does hear, the results are swift and merciless. Fear and suffering drive them together. There are more casualties as the training becomes more strenuous, more dangerous, in harsher conditions. She can see them rallying around one another, leaping to the aid of an injured classmate once the shadow of the chunin has passed, or pairing together to train and keep an eye out for trouble, banding together to grieve over an empty bunk. Still, their teachers never intervene. They just observe this bonding behaviour, impassively, noting it silently.

Zabuza's furious when he first sees the massive bruise blooming across the side of her face.

"It's my fault," she assures him, hands held palms out in an appeasing gesture. "I made too much noise." That doesn't seem to help.

She unties the bell from around her neck and lets him try it. It doesn't ring once throughout their training session. On his own, even without the threat of immediate and agonizing pain, he'd mastered it through sheer determination and will.

There's a tense energy gathering inside of her as fall approaches for the third and final time. Zabuza's ready for her exam to be over if only so she'll stop obsessing over it. They were given no real details, just that it would be an assessment of their worth and the culmination of three years of work. Her free hours the day before the test she can hardly keep still. She goes over everything, every ninjutsu technique, every hold, block, stance, kick and combination of attacks she can think of, prods him into quizzing her on the contents of her notebooks.

This was the day the first and second years were kicked out of the area for the day, and though no one had ever said so she finally realized that it was so the third year students could study uninterrupted. Her classes had all been cancelled for the evening, so she, still bounding in place, begs him to come meet her for more practice at the old time, after supper.

"You're going to burn out," he tells her wryly. "If you hurt yourself you'll be terrible tomorrow."

"No such thing as too much training," she insists, and keeps pestering until he agrees, hesitantly, that he'll _**try **_and make it there again tonight.

There's a kind of electricity in the air, as her classmates exude both relief and nerves. They file into the tiny third year mess hall, and the enthusiastic chatter dies as they step inside, the ball of stunned students accumulating as more step into the room and see the scene laid out before them. There's food on the trays, the tables all pushed to the far side of the room, but it's the two unfamillar figures standing before them that's caught their eye. There's a man in a hunter-nin uniform watching them cryptically from behind the curving eyes of his white mask, streaks of teal blue set across it.

The other figure is the third Mizukage.

Stiffly, uncomfortably, the group seems to realize all at once that it should probably kneel, and the hundred and eight surviving children sink to the ground, shuffling out of one another's way.

He's a middle aged man with surprisingly normal features and greying black hair. He's sturdily built, though, and even through the robes Kotone can see how every movement is precise and purposeful.

"I'm here," he begins, his voice even and low, "because I, naturally, take a personal interest in the future of this village and tomorrow, half of you," his black eyes pass over the crowd, "will go on to join the dreaded ranks of the Village Hidden in the Mist."

There's a hushed chatter through the group and boldly, one boy that she's never paid much attention to raises his hand. "Mizukage sama," he begins haltingly, "are half of us going to fail?"

"No," the leader of their village says, unblinking. "Half of you are going to die."

A cold silence falls over the room, interrupted after a seeming eternity by an eruption of hysterical, disbelieving laughter from the back of the room. "T-that's a joke, right?" No one answers.

Kotone only becomes aware of how she's felt frozen to the spot when she glances over, surprised that the outburst actually hadn't come from Hatsuka. Hatsuka is near her, white as a sheet but she can see in his eyes that he's long past denial. There's a terrified certainty in the set of his features.

"I tell you this now," their kage begins slowly, "because I have no place in my village for cowards. The doors are unlocked. Run, if you want to. However," he pauses, and turns to the oinin motionless beside him. "There will be dire consequences, for you, for anyone who helps you, for anyone who hides you. You aren't academy students anymore. A runaway academy student is a disobedient child to be punished, but as of tomorrow, you will be ninja. And for a ninja to flee his duty is an act of treason."

"This is a member of the Hunter division," the third rests a hand on the soft shoulder of the other ninja's coat, and the masked man steps back towards a lumpy thing covered by a sheet that she'd been too focused on the Mizukage to really notice. The assembled children watch, eyes wide, as he pulls a set of sharp, glinting tools from inside of his coat, and throws back the sheet. It's a corpse, eyes still frozen in terror, thistle grey flak jacket pierced by long thin needles through what would be his heart and lungs.

"He's going to show you what we do to deserters."

/ / / /

It's later than he'd intended when he finally slips away from the village, and he dashes full tilt up the hill, winded by the time he reaches their clearing.

Kotone's there, and he makes no effort to hide his footfalls, but she doesn't look up when he approaches. She just sits on their makeshift bench, head down, nails digging into the sodden wood, face obscured by the curtain of her blue-black hair.

"Hey." No response, so he tries again, and still nothing. It isn't until he sits beside her and reaches out for her shoulder that she seems to snap out of whatever trance she was in.

"Oh," she says quietly, like he's appeared out of nowhere. "Oh… that's good… I was hoping I'd get to see you…" she trails off, still not really looking at him.

He frowns at her, something uneasy taking hold in his chest. "Big day tomorrow. Shouldn't you be practicing?"

She shakes her head, dark pigtails swishing over her shoulder. "I don't think it will make much of a difference, now."

He quirks his mouth to the side, his eyebrows dipping deeper in confusion. "Well did they at least tell you what the exam's going to be like?"

She doesn't say anything, just pulls her shoulders in tighter and her focus seems to wander again, her mind father away.

The unsettled feeling is creeping up his spine, intuition whispers to him that something is very, very wrong. He stands with a determined sound low in his throat and pushes his way in front of her, grabs her firmly by the upper arm and kneels. "Kotone," he demands. "Kotone look at me."

Slowly, hesitantly, she raises her eyes to meet his.

"You know what the exam is," he guesses, pushing himself back to the fallen log but carefully not letting go so she has to turn to face him. She gives a little nod, and somehow he already knows, knows as this chill creeping down his spine, but he asks anyway.

She tells him.

"A lot of things make sense now," she muses, seemingly more present now that her secret is out in the open.

"Do you know who?" he asks numbly.

"They say it's random."

He's still shaking his head, his fingers clenching tighter on her arms. "They can't do this," he says, voice breaking for a moment. "They _**can't.**_"

"I'm theirs. They can do whatever they want with me."

He shakes his head emphatically. "No. You do everything they want for years, and they just… just _**turn**_ on you? Like it wasn't _**enough**_ for them? No. How are you so _**calm**_ about this?"

She inclines her head, in that familiar thoughtful gesture, and her hand slides up to rest on his, likely meant to calm him. "I don't feel anything," she reminds him. "How should I feel?"

"_**Betrayed**_."

An idea strikes him like lightning, and frantically the boy jumps to his feet. "We could leave," he whispers hurriedly. "Right now. We steal a boat— hell, we could _**walk**_— to one of the little islands, catch a ferry to the mainland, and disappear. They'll never, ever find us."

"Us," she breathes, bright eyes wide and shining. "If I ran away, you would come with me?"

"Yeah." He nods, surprised at his own certainty. "Yeah, I would."

"That… that sounds wonderful, but…" She mouths something, starts to speak but she hesitates, something almost pained flickering across her face. "No. No, I _**can't.**_ I… I won't." The set of her jaw is determined as the eight year old shakes her head. "This is what I'm _**for**_." It comes out as a whisper. "I have to go. At eight AM tomorrow, I have to be at the arena. Please understand." Then she smiles at him in that way that's too normal to be real, still trying to reassure him. "I'm not scared."

He can only blink at her stupidly for a long moment, something constricting in his chest, before slowly sinking down beside her.

"Thank you," she wraps her arms around him, and pulls him into a crushingly tight hug, so close he can feel her trembling. "Thank you for being my friend."

With a resolute little breath of air, and lets go, wanders over to the kunai she'd left embedded in their wooden target before hesitating and reaching down to the holster at her thigh. "Oh… Oh, haha. Silly me. I'm only allowed one, and… I think I get a better feeling from this one. So…"

She steps away, expression still placid but her movements unsteady. "How about I meet you back here, at noon tomorrow, if I can?"

"Sure," he says shakily. "I'll see you here tomorrow."

"Wish me luck," she says before turning towards the forest and the academy.

"Kotone—!" he calls after her, and she pauses. "Just… Just win tomorrow, alright?"

"I can't promise that, but," she gives a tiny nod. "I'll do my best," and then she's swallowed by the shadows, disappears into the dark between the bare trees.

He sits there, in the cold, thoughts circling again, and again around the same conclusion, hands clenched into fists.

He can still hear the blond chunin's taunting rejection but it's striking a different nerve than before. _I'm doing you a fucking favour, here,_ he'd said. _It's a better chance than you've got with this lot._

He thinks of the way the villagers had all looked at her, uncomfortable and sickly sweet.

They had known. They had known all along.

He thinks of her father, training her and schooling her, all the while just to offer her up like a lamb for the slaughter, all trussed up in a little pink ribbon.

Is that what happens when you're the Mizukage? All that power, and people just start to look like little pawns to use and discard? No. No, not pawns, tools_**. Weapons**_. Isn't that what she'd always called herself?

His fists shake, something bigger than anger, more than just rage focused to a laser point, white hot inside of him. He waits for it to pass but it only grows, the inevitable end growing clearer.

Well, wasn't it true?

He had been left to die by the people of his village, his life nothing to them as it was nothing to the people of Kirigakure. Here, he was cared for only as long as he was useful. Ultimately, he has no worth outside of what he can do for someone who has what he wants. People pretend to be moral, and civilized, but ultimately they're animals, all fighting for the same resources, no mercy, no right. There is no inherent value in a human life, not his, not Kotone's, not the other condemned children they'd spirited away only to abuse and betray. Make them eat together, sleep together, suffer together and then set them against each other to kill their hearts and make them better empty vessels for another's will.

It's was cruel— too cruel, but it was _**allowed**_, because the people with enough power deemed it necessary.

Well.

If that was the way of the world, so be it.

If those were the rules, he could play.

Zabuza's dark eyes flicker to the kunai she'd left embedded in the splintered wood, the gouges she'd left there likely the only mark she'll have left on the world if she dies tomorrow.

It pulls free easily, and he studies the blade with a newfound appreciation. It can cut, it can slice, it can stab but these things are not its purpose. A kunai's purpose— what it's _**for**_— is to kill. He doesn't go back to the fishmarket. He never goes back to the fishmarket.

Zabuza and his kunai spend the night beneath the bleachers of a dusty arena.

/ / / /

When the sound becomes unbearable, she kicks upwards, nudging the underside of Hatsuka's bed, sharply, with her foot. "Go to sleep," she hisses. The boy above her just cries harder.

"I _**can't**_ do this," she hears him whisper frantically. "These are my _**friends**_."

"You heard the hunter-nin," she says, eyes fixed above her on the underside of his mattress through the wooden slats cradling the top bunk. She's never answered him before, and he squeaks in surprise when she does, but it can hardly make a difference now. He's tossing, and turning, and the frame shifts and creaks. "Ninja leave the village, people you'll have worked with, will have known. They have to die. If you can't kill whoever you're asked to, you're no use."

"I'll…" Hatsuka takes in a shuddering breath. "If I die tomorrow, I'll never see my sister again… or my mother, or father. Or all my cousins… or uncle Risu, but that's not really— I mean," there's a soft thud, then another, as he beats his head against his worn pillow, trying to muffle his tears. "I just want to go _**home**_," he squeaks, voice thick with a half-choked sob.

"Then go home," she answers simply. "Straight through whoever it is they put in front of you."

He's quiet for a moment, still all shuddering breaths and choked whimpering as he tries to will his voice even again. "Even if it's you?" he asks skeptically.

"Especially if it's me," Kotone replies, voice steady. She pauses, waiting for a reply, and nests herself more snugly in her bed sheets when there is none. "I'm going to sleep now," she announces firmly, just loud enough to be sure he's heard her, and shuts her eyes. Kotone tries to clear her head and drift off, but can't.

She thinks of Nezumi Hatsuka, fighting and killing to see his family, and understands that this is fundamentally wrong.

Orders should be enough—are enough, for her. She'll fight, and she'll win if she's capable, because it's asked of her. If she dies, then she wasn't good enough, wasn't worthy, and then Kirigakure will be rid of her and it will be better off for it. Her desire to win tomorrow, she tells herself, is completely centered on proving her worth as a kunoichi, her value to the village and to her Kage.

It obviously has nothing to do with the boy she's promised to return to if she survives.

He was fine without her for a long time, and he would be again, all dangerous thoughts of running away together dispelled. No matter what happens to her tomorrow, he'll be alright.

With that thought, she must have drifted to sleep because when she next opens her eyes, it's morning.

Silently, the girl slips out of bed. Everywhere she sees shaking limbs and dark circles beneath the eyes of her classmates, many of whom haven't left their bunks yet.

Hatsuka doesn't seem to have slept at all, and she can see him atop his bunk, staring lifelessly into an untouched bowl of rice he must have brought back from the mess hall, eyes still red and glassy.

There are only a few other third years there when she wanders down, other children of shinobi families or of a particular character that have set their faces with grim determination as they force themselves to eat.

She has the senior girls' small locker room to herself when she showers. Today, every small action seems heavy with meaning, her motions deliberate. Everything she does this morning could be for the last time.

She towels off, dresses, brushes out her hair, hesitates as she's about to tie it up in her usual pigtails— childish and impractical.

If she survives today, she'll be a ninja—an adult.

Kotone gathers her hair into a high ponytail and starts towards the arena.

* * *

**Author's Notes: A great big thank you to everyone reading! I hope that you're enjoying it so far, and a huge thank you to everyone who's reviewed, you absolutely make my day. **

**I'm trying not to blab too much in these ANs, so if you do have anything you'd like to discuss with me, my inbox is open. Love and happy thoughts towards all of you. **


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